Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/89

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA.
75

habits, of these happy people, I should have been well satisfied.'

"Twenty miles north-east of Monrovia, on the same river, at the foot of the highlands, is another flourishing town, called Millsburgh, containing about five hundred inhabitants, two churches, and one school, and rapidly increasing by new colonists. Millsburgh has peculiar advantages, enabling it to become the commercial medium between the interior and the seacoast. The land is fertile, and the forests abound with excellent timber. The town is represented as very neat and healthy. Another town of recent settlement is Marshall.

"Another considerable settlement in Liberia is the very flourishing colony formed under the patronage of the Maryland Colonization Society, and also fostered by the State — at Cape Palmas — called New Maryland. This colony is advantageously located, and promises to excel in agriculture. Its situation is high, open, free from any surrounding marshes, and most favorable to health. Its inhabitants are described as temperate, intelligent, and industrious; and as giving evidence of mental as well as physical energy, that greatly encourages the confident hope and expectation that they will yet occupy an honourable rank in the civilized world.

"Besides these, there are the flourishing settlements more recently commenced at Edina and Bassa Cove, the one beautifully situated on the south, and the other on the north, side of the St. John's, near its mouth. Also, about eighty miles south-east from Bassa Cove, on the river Sinon, the Mississippi Colonization Society have