BOOKS.
LIBERIA.*
THERE is probably no State in the world where English is spoken of which the average Englishman knows less than that Republic of American negroes on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea which has chosen the high-sounding name of Liberia. It is not a trade centre, it is out of the beat of the ordinary sportsman, it has no remarkable natural features except its virgin forest, and its Government is commonly regarded as a feeble affair, half pathetic and half ridiculous. Sir Harry Johnston pleads for a more sympathetic treatment. The little Republic is at once "an attempt and an atonement," and deserves encouragement instead of ridicule. It does not offer a general solution of the native problem to America, but it is an experiment full of interest and, it is possible, of hope. Moreover, the country has much to offer to the explorer, for its forests are little penetrated, and the uplands to the north are almost unknown. The naturalist and the anthropologist will find in Liberia an excellent hunting-ground, for civilisa- tion has made as yet but a small impression on savagery. The author has visited the country several times, and has made an elaborate study of its fauna and flora, as well as of its institu- tions. His two handsome, and, in the literal sense, most weighty, volumes are intended less as a treatise than as an encyclopaedia of all the available information on the State. As be writes as much for Liberian as for English readers, he repeats much which might otherwise have been taken for granted, and his desire to chronicle every known fact naturally robs the work of any form. But it is a book not only of great utility to the traveller, but of genuine interest to the untravelled ; and the wonderful illustrations from the author's brush and pencil are sufficient of themselves to fire the imagination.
To the naturalist, the main attraction of the place is that it embraces the most dense and virgin forest land north of the
• Liberia. By Sir Harry Johnston, G.C.K.G., K.C.B. 2 vols. London Entolihnon and Co. [S2 2a. net.]
Congo basin. It is, therefore, a paradise for plants and the smaller fauna, though it contains also the elephant, the curious dwarf hippopotamus, many varieties of woodland buck, and in the unexplored hill country the ordinary African game animals. The second volume, which is an elaborate account of the flora and fauna, is in many ways the most entertaining part of the work. Among the trees is the famous "water tree," which is full of a sap which tastes like
pure water. Every variety of palm and fern flourishes, including the homely English bracken ; and many foreign importations, such as the mango and the orange, have spread along the littoral. As regards the fauna, there is a large variety of the monkey and the cat tribes, and among the more curious animals may be mentioned the beautiful red river bog, whose domestication Sir Harry Johnston recommends, and that singular creature, the water chevrotain. As is natural in a forest country, bird life is rich, and, unfortunately for the traveller, so is insect life. Liberia boasts enormous scorpions and tarantulas, and a variety of cockroach which may well
scare the nervous tourist :— " These insects, as elsewhere in the tropics, do not hesitate at night to attack human beings who are asleep. They creep to the corners of the mouth of the sleeping person to suck the saliva. They eat the toe-nails down to the quick, and, above all, they gnaw at any sore place or ulcer on the skin, so that they may become almost dangerous."
Small wonder that the author complains that social entertain ments in Liberia lose much of their charm when specimens of these gentry may be observed scurrying about the carpet. But there is one compensation. The mosquito, that most indefatigable of pests, is less common than in almost any other tropical country.
The indigenous inhabitants of the land may be reckoned at about two millions, as compared with the twelve thousand American-negro settlers. The chief race is the Mandingo, which is apparently a compound of the Fula and the pure negro, and therefore with a trace of Arab blood in its composi- tion. These race migrations in Africa are traced by Sir Harry Johnston to the need of the human creature for salt, which made the forest-dwellers push on to the sea or to the salt-pans of the desert, and he suggests that cannibalism may have its origin in the same craving. In some chapters of great interest he gives an account of tribal customs and folk-lore, and in particular of those strange initiation schools for boys and girls which are found among all African races, and the origin of which is hid in primeval mists. From such a subject it is curious to turn to the life of the civilised settlers, who, though of the same blood, belong to a wholly different world. The first travellers who seem to have visited the country were Hanno and his Carthaginians about the year 520 B.C., and Sir Harry Johnston thinks that in the name "gorilla" which they applied to some wild men they captured there is trace of a Fula word. Hanno and his crews may be a myth ; but there is no doubt about the authenticity of the Norman and Genoese visit about the fourteenth century of our era. Then came the Portuguese, who ransacked the whole Guinea coast for spices and gold, and incidentally did some good to the land by introducing foreign plants and animals. From the sixteenth century onwards the whole littoral became the hunting-ground of slavers, and it is only with the abolition of the slave trade that its serious history can be said to begin. Between 1786 and 1794 various attempts were made by British philanthropists to repatriate freed slaves in Sierra Leone. America interested herself in the same experiment, and in 1817 the Colonisation Society was founded at Washington, and the foundation of Liberia began. The determination of one negro immigrant, by name Elijah Johnson, prevented the first party from turning back ; and by and by, under a New Englander called Jebudi Ashmun, the encampment grew into a settle- ment. At first the newcomers lived within a stockade, and were engaged in constant wars with neighbouring tribes ; but by and by they disarmed their hostility, purchased a tract of territory, and founded a town. We have no space to follow the vicissitudes of the little colony, which the curious will find narrated in great detail in Sir Harry Johnston's book. In 1841, in the person of General Joseph Roberts, Liberia received
its first coloured Governor, and in 1847 it issued its Declara- tion of Independence, and constituted itself a Republic. Its Constitution is a very sane and judicious document, with only one doubtful provision,—the fact that President, House of Representatives, and half the Senate hold office for two years only, which means that "every other year the little Republic is convulsed by political agitation." Since then it has followed a peaceful career, and, though it is neither rich nor populous, it has succeeded in reaching a fair degree of civilisation. It is difficult to speculate on the future of this interesting experiment, but it must be remembered that it is still an exotic, and though people of African lineage have been transplanted to their original home, they have not yet found their natural line of development. Their civilisation is still of the top-hat and frock-coat variety, and therefore doomed to be superficial and barren. Sir Harry Johnston argues, probably with truth, that the only way in which to build up a sound stock is that these American Liberians, many of them half-castes, should be absorbed into the indigenous population, and the whole fused by degrees into a purely African community. They need not lose such civilisation as they have acquired, but they must give it the accent of the continent they have chosen.
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