and another colony, several hundred miles up the Gambia river, in the interior, at McCarthy's island; which is reached by steamers and large sailing vessels, and which yields an important trade. A day's sail brings the traveller to Sierra Leone, the capital of West Africa, the settlement of recaptured Africans, with a population of over 60,000 inhabitants: its chief town, Freetown, with over 20,000 inhabitants—a capacious city, with numerous fine and even elegant houses; with a cathedral and many stone churches; large shipping, many merchants, and considerable wealth. Here is the Governor's residence, a substantial and capacious building; and here is to be seen, on an elevated site, the barracks for the several regiments of native African troops enrolled in the British army.
Just below Sierra Leone is the Republic of Liberia, founded by the American Colonization Society, with great sacrifice of precious life, and by the expenditure of large means and treasure. I cannot enter into minute statements concerning this young nation. But I beg to say that here is what I claim to be a most singular and striking phenomenon; of 15,000 simple and unlettered men, descendants of slaves, exiles from hereditary wrong and oppression, who, with, indeed, the aid of a large Christian philanthropy, have swept the slave-trade from 700 miles of the coast; have assimilated nigh 20,000 native Africans to them, to their own civilization and religion; have brought into the Christian faith, by baptism, several hundreds of their neighboring heathen; have built some 20
