have for a long period been existing within little more than a hundred miles of a government formed solely for the purpose of its extermination. I have now only to add, that four days before my arrival, a Spanish schooner sailed from this, with three hundred slaves on board, and within the last month three other vessels had departed with full cargoes. I have the honor to remain. Sir, &c.
In December following, the Cyrené detained another French schooner, la Caroline, of 78 tons, 2 guns, and 20 men, employed in the same clandestine trade; which vessel, however, as well as l’Hypolite, was afterwards liberated by the court of mixed commissioners at Sierra Leone, although five slaves were found on board of her, secreted in places where it was hardly possible to suppose that any human being could exist.
Captain Grace next obtained the release of 80 men, women, and children, purchased with la Caroline’s cargo at the Grand Bassa, many of the latter not more than two years of age; and he afterwards examined every spot between that and the river Lagos, where slaving was likely to be carried on: we subsequently find him proceeding to Ascension, with a cargo of provisions for the garrison of that island.
In May, June, and July, 1823, the Cyrené was employed in conveying Sir Charles McCarthy and suite from the Gold Coast to Bathurst, a new settlement on St. Mary’s island, in the river Gambia, and from thence to Sierra Leone, where, during her absence, the chief justice of the colony, two members of council, one clergyman, three missionaries, two merchants, and about 130 other Europeans, with many people of colour, were swept off by a malignant fever within the short period of one month. So great was the consequent panic, that few of the survivors visited each other; they no longer attended the dead to their graves; and most of those who had the means of conveyance, or were so far their own masters as to be able to leave the settlement, shut up their houses and departed, some to the West Indies, and others to any little factories which they possessed along the coast. The Cyrené likewise suffered severely at this time, although she had passed through the preceding rains without the
