The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper

      SIERRA LEONE.

      Sierra Leone is a British colony, and the capital is Free Town, situated on a peninsula lying between the broad estuary of the Sherboro and the Sierra Leone rivers, connected with the mainland by an isthmus not more than one mile and a half broad. The colony also includes a number of islands, among which are many good harbours. Its history has one interesting point. When, in 1787, it became a British colony, a company was formed, which included a scheme for making it a home for free negroes, and to prove that colonial produce could be raised profitably without resorting to slave labour. Its prosperity was seriously affected during the French Revolution by the depredations of French cruisers, and in 1808 the company ceded all its rights to the Crown. Its population includes negroes from 200 different African tribes, many of them liberated from slavery and slave-ships, a subject which will be treated hereafter in this work.

      One of the great industries of Sierra Leone is the manufacture of cocoa-nut oil. The factories are extensive affairs. It is a very beautiful country, on the whole, and when acclimatised, Europeans find that they can live splendidly on the products of the country. The fisheries, both sea and river, are wonderfully productive, and employ about 1,500 natives. Boat-building is carried on to some extent, the splendid forests yielding timber so large that canoes capable of holding a hundred men have been made from a single log, like those already mentioned in connection with the north-west coast of America. Many of the West Indian products have been introduced; sugar, coffee, indigo, ginger, cotton, and rice thrive well, as do Indian corn, the yam, plantain, pumpkins, banana, cocoa, baobab, pine-apple, orange, lime, guava, papaw, pomegranate, orange, and lime. Poultry is particularly abundant. It therefore might claim attention as a fruitful and productive country but for the malaria of its swampy rivers and low lands.

      And now, leaving Sierra Leone, our good ship makes for the Cape of Good Hope, passing, mostly far out at sea, down that coast along which the Portuguese mariners crept so cautiously yet so surely till Diaz and Da Gama reached South Africa, while the latter showed them the way to the fabled Cathaia, the Orient—India, China, and the Spice Islands.

      In the year 1486 “The Cape” of capes par excellence, which rarely nowadays bears its full title, was discovered by Bartholomew de Diaz, a commander in the service of John II. of Portugal. He did not proceed to the eastward of it, and it was reserved for the great Vasco da Gama—afterwards the first Viceroy of India—an incident in whose career forms, by-the-by, the plot of L’Africaine, Meyerbeer’s grand opera, to double it. It was called at first Cabo Tormentoso—“the Cape of Storms”—but by royal desire was changed to that of “Buon Esperanza”—“Good Hope”—the title it still bears. Cape Colony was acquired by Great Britain in 1620, although for a long time it was practically in the hands of the Dutch, a colony having been planted by their East India Company. The Dutch held it in this way till 1795, when the territory was once more taken by our country. It was returned to the Dutch at the Peace of Amiens, only to be snatched from them again in 1806, and finally confirmed to Britain at the general peace of 1815.

      The population, including the Boers, or farmers of Dutch descent, Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Malays, is not probably over 600,000, while the original territory is about 700 miles long by 400 wide, having an area of not far from 200,000 square miles. The capital of the colony is Cape Town, lying at the foot, as every schoolboy knows, of the celebrated Table Mountain.

      A recent writer, Mr. Boyle,117 speaks cautiously of Cape Town and its people. There are respectable, but not very noticeable, public buildings. “Some old Dutch houses there are, distinguishable chiefly by a superlative flatness and an extra allowance of windows. The population is about 30,000 souls, white, black, and mixed. I should incline to think more than half fall into the third category. They seem to be hospitable and good-natured in all classes. … There is complaint of slowness, indecision, and general ‘want of go’ about the place. Dutch blood is said to be still too apparent in business, in local government, and in society. I suppose there is sound basis for these accusations, since trade is migrating so rapidly towards the rival mart of Port Elizabeth. … But ten years ago the entire export of wool passed through Cape Town. Last year, as I find in the official returns, 28,000,000 lbs. were shipped at the eastern port out of the whole 37,000,000 lbs. produced in the colony. The gas-lamps, put up by a sort of coup d’état in the municipality, were not lighted until last year, owing to the opposition of the Dutch town councillors. They urged that decent people didn’t want to be out at night, and the ill-disposed didn’t deserve illumination. Such facts seem to show that the city is not quite up to the mark in all respects.”

      Simon’s Bay, near Table Bay, where Cape Town is situated, is a great rendezvous for the navy; there are docks and soldiers there, and a small town. The bay abounds in fish. The Rev. John Milner, chaplain of the Galatea, says that during the visit of Prince Alfred, “large shoals of fish (a sort of coarse mackerel) were seen all over the bay; numbers came alongside, and several of them were harpooned with grains by some of the youngsters from the accommodation-ladder. Later in the day a seal rose, and continued fishing and rising in the most leisurely manner. At one time it was within easy rifle distance, and might have been shot from the ship.”118 Fish and meat are so plentiful in the colony that living is excessively cheap.