Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/144

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indicated some ability, at least for self-government and the management of their own public affairs.

The banks of the St. Paul's, St. John's, Sinoe, and Farmington Rivers, and of the River Cavalla, now teeming with civilized life and industry, presenting to view comfortable Christian homes, inviting school-*houses and imposing church edifices, but for the founding of Liberia would have remained until this day studded with slave-barracoons, the theatres of indescribable suffering, wickedness, and shocking deaths.

Liberia is gradually growing in the elements of national stability. The natural riches of that region are enormous, and are such as, sooner or later, will support a commerce, to which that at present existing on the coast is merely fractional. The Liberians own and run a fleet of "coasters," collecting palm-oil, cam-wood, ivory, gold-dust, and other commodities. A schooner of eighty tons was built, costing eleven thousand dollars, and loaded in the autumn of 1866, at New York, from money and the proceeds of African produce sent for that purpose by an enterprising merchant of Grand Bassa County.

A firm at Monrovia are having a vessel built in one of the ship-yards of New York to cost fifteen thousand dollars.

An intelligent friend has given us the following as an approximate estimate of the sugar-crop on the St. Paul's in 1866: Sharp, one hundred and twenty thousand pounds; Cooper, thirty thousand pounds; Anderson, thirty-five thousand pounds; Howland, forty thousand pounds; Roe, thirty thousand pounds; sundry smaller farmers, one hundred and fifty thou-