with a multitude of natives who have been servants in our Liberian families, and are daily in the utterance of English. A considerable number of these have enjoyed the opportunity of school instruction, and have carried back to the country the ability to read and to write English. In many cases, it is, in truth impossible to say whether their attainments should be suggestive of sorrow or of joy. I have had naked boys working for me on the St. Paul, who, when they wanted any thing, would write a note with as much exactness as I could. We all here know one native man, over the river, who is a leader in Devil-dances, and yet can read and write like a scholar. A friend of mine, travelling in the bush, nigh 200 miles from Monrovia, stopped one night, exhausted, at the hut of a native man, who brought him his own Bible to read, but alas! it was accompanied by a decanter of rum! The moral of such facts I shall not enter upon; but here is the simple fact, that by our presence, though in small numbers, we have already spread abroad, for scores of miles, the English language, written as well as spoken, among this large population of heathen.
The trading schemes of merchants and settlers, is another powerful auxiliary, in disseminating this language.
At every important point on the coast, Liberian, English, and American merchants have, for years, established their factories. Between Cape Palmas and Monrovia, there cannot be less than 30 factories. In each of these depots, some three or four English-speaking persons—Liberians—are living; in a few
