ony as Great Britain had adopted Sierra Leone; but we would have no entangling over-sea alliances, and so missed a chance to get a foothold on what is nowa continent well worth exploiting. So a compromise was effected with the British.
After a time Buchanan died in the harness and Joseph J. Roberts succeeded him as Governor. He was, a statesman as well as a natural leader. He had been trained under the masterful Buchanan, and the region under his control continued to flourish, after a fashion, until the evil of its anomalous position among nations compelled an organization as a republic. Accordingly a convention was called, a Declaration of Independence was proclaimed, a new constitution written and adopted, and on August 24, 1847, the lone-star flag of the Republic of Liberia was flung to the breeze.
A census report published in the African Repository for 1847 (p. 192) shows that in 1845 the immigrant population amounted "to nearly 5,000," to which was added a native population of which “estimates vary from 10,000 to 15,000. Of these about 300 are so far civilized" that they were permitted to vote at elections. In this report the startling statement is made that of all the emigrants from the United States to Liberia no less than one-fifth had died of the socalled acclimatizing fevers! The average life of a white man there, as learned on another authority, was three years.
Ten years later (1857) the Rev. Charles W. Thomas, the naval chaplain already quoted, reported Liberia as having a coast line of "over 600 miles, embracing a country of 30,000 square miles, and a population of
