No. 258.
Mr. Turner to Mr. Fish.
Monrovia, Liberia, May 25, 1872. (Received July 8.)
Sir: I have the honor, now that, after thirty days, more or less, of careful observation, I am convinced that the desire and effort of the present administration is to introduce and cultivate, as between the disagreeing political factions, a conciliatory and conservative policy, to report to the Department the present aspect of public affairs in Liberia, I therefore prefer at this time to enter briefly upon an exposition in a general synopsis of the national capacities, present condition, and future, prospects of Liberia.
This republic occupies about six hundred miles of that part of this coast so universally admitted to be better adapted to the rapid progress of civilization than any African territory north of the equator and south of the southern boundary-line of the great desert of Sahara.
By some whose wide experience upon this coast well qualifies them for a reliable opinion, the Liberian territory is pronounced the most desirable of any portion of West Africa.
With reference to the national capacities of this country, enough has been said by other and abler persons to render any attempt of mine in the same direction but a repetition of well known and widely circulated statements.
Perhaps, however, the Department will not weary with the mention of such of those facts as will form a sufficiency for my present purpose.
The entire western boundary-line of Liberia lies along the east shore of the Atlantic Ocean, and possesses numerous harbors which, agreeable to the usually expressed opinions of experienced navigators, are not the most superior, but, when taken comparatively, are found to be slightly above mediocre.
The usual placidity of the Atlantic waters on this coast renders these harbors free from risk or danger. The interior presents a country as picturesque in appearance as it is inviting in all its aspects; a fine undulating region, abounding in streams and rivulets, and said by those who have traveled extensively interiorward to be quite salubrious and [Page 331] healthful, being comparatively free from the, deadly in fine nee of the miasma arising from the thick mangrove-swamps near the coast. Thus far, from a great want of proper appliances for pushing settlements to the more healthful interior, civilization has remained along the coast Means of transportation are purely primary; therefore settlers have felt compelled to forego the occupancy of the (in some parts) seventy-five miles of interior Liberian territory, and locate upon the rivers near the coast and emptying into the ocean, that they might be able in their canoes to reach the sea-board with such productions as are intended for exportation. Although there are numerous rivers, nature has, by leaving them unnavigable, decreed their uselessness except for watering and fertilizing the soil, &c.
But two Liberian rivers are navigable, even for small boats, the St. Paul and the Cavalla, the former about twenty-five and the latter about seventy-five miles.
Liberia possesses all the natural facilities peculiar to most other tropical countries; perhaps in some respects it possesses natural advantages superior to most others. I know it will be urged by some that this multifarious liberality of nature tends rather to the promotion of indolence than to the encouragement of industry, but it is quite sufficient for the purposes of Christianity and successful empire that no country better compensates industry, especially the labor of the farmer, than does Liberia. It seems almost unnecessary to pronounce this soil prolific, extremely rich, and seemingly inexhaustibly productive.
The voluntary productions of the soil are almost fabulous. The palm-tree, that widely celebrated benefactor to man in tropical climes, is here in great abundance, and volunteers a utility that I have frequently thought approximates to indispensableness to both the native and the Americo-Liberian. Growing without cultivation, it supplies the lard, soap, butter, and a wholesome beverage known as palm-wine, for domestic uses, while palm nut and oil furnishes the principal staple for exportation. The cocoa, the bamboo, the pine-apple, the mahogany, the banana, the cam-wood, the orange, the barn-wood, the Calibar bean, the lime, (sweet and sour,) the sycamore, the black-gum, the custard-apple, the mangrove-plum, together with a wide additional variety of fibrous and other trees of generous utility, grow voluntarily in profuse abundance and with great vigor.
The cultivation of the coffee-tree has been attempted within the last twenty years, and with great comparative success. This tree reaches its maturity here in much shorter time than in some other countries., I have discovered, by consultation with good authorities, that the coffee-tree in some countries is from six to seven years attaining mature growth. I am credibly informed that when properly cared for it matures in Liberia in an average time of from three and a half to five years.
The average annual yield of a well-attended coffee-tree is from four to six pounds. Notwithstanding the admitted superiority of Liberian coffee, consequent upon the adaptedness of the soil to coffee-growing, in this as in all things else, Liberians are sadly in want of modern facilities, and therefore find it difficult to prepare the berry for market. Like the Mocha in other countries, the coffee-tree in Liberia needs not the benevolent shades of other trees that it may thrive, but grows vigorously when exposed to the direct rays of the sun.
During the late disturbances in the United States the raising of cotton on a not very extensive plan was attempted by Liberians, and the fact established that very superior cotton can be produced from this soil and climate.
[Page 332]Sugar-cane is abundant, and thrives as finely as in southern United States.
Two crops of corn may be produced in a year. In fine, we find here: the most profuse luxuriant vegetation.
We observe at once that species of plants, the broadness and plenti-fulness of whose leaves indicate a sufficiency of exuberant humidity; shrubbery, the profusion and rich utility of whose gums, spices, and aromata, together with table-vegetables, (native of mare temperate climes,) the hardihood of whose growth bears testimony to the variegated natural capacities of Liberian soil.
With reference to the mineral capacities of Liberia little is known; however, it is certain that iron of good quality exists in large quantities.
Hon. H. E. W. Johnson, secretary of state, informs me that the presence of gold is also a certainty.
The principal domesticated animals are the bullock or beeve, cows, sheep, geese, turkeys, ducks, and chickens.
Like all equatorial climates, that of Liberia does not experienca the vicissitudes of the four seasons, but the year is arbitrarily divided into but two seasons, the rainy and the dry, or, in the Liberian parlance, the rains and the dries.” This peremptory division of the year has doubtless led many erroneously to suppose that in this country we are called to endure six months of uninterrupted rain, and six months of hot and dry weather in every year, but so far is this impression erroneous that in almost every month in the year there falls here some rain, and, on the other hand, we are allowed some pleasant days in every month in the year.
Liberia, in common with all the western coast of Africa, claims the foreigner from the temperate zone as a proper subject for that singularly treacherous disease, “African fever.” This fever is the great barrier to the native of the temperate zone. It is well understood that the physical system of every individual who removes from a temperate into a tropical climate must undergo a change. In this climate the life of such persons depends by far more upon the organic or constitutional peculiarities of the individual, the previous habits, and lingering or chronic diseases—the condition with reference to comfort or discomfort in the country, and especially upon the state of the mind, in regard to calmness or irritability, contentment or dissatisfaction, than upon any prescribed form or method of medical treatment. From what I have experienced and been able to learn, I feel convinced that nearly 40 per cent, of those entering this climate under the above circumstances, from some one or other, or possibly from several of the above causes, or from a combination of the whole, die during the process of acclimation, from three months to thirty-six months. The African fever is remarkably varied in its several forms of appearance or attack, and utterly baffles successful description during this the period of its average existence. Its outlines may be in some cases pronounced an intermittent, in others a remittent form. In addition to the usual coast or African fever, one will occasionally meet with cases resembling other kinds of fevers, which are usually described in medical books; but these are generally not sufficiently marked to justify distinctive arrangement. Rheumatism, both acute and chronic, occasionally occurs, but never very violent. Dropsical affections are quite frequent, especially dropsy of the cellular membrane beneath the skin. Dropsy of the abdomen sometimes occurs, in consequence of enlargement of the liver or spleen after severe or protracted attacks of fever.
[Page 333]The natives are frequently troubled with diseases of the skin known as “craw craw” “yaw,” and sometimes leprosy. Cleanliness of habit is regarded as a preventive of disease of the skin. White persons are thought to be more subject to ulcerous, as well as to most other diseases of the climate, than black persons.
Some other diseases common to most countries are occasionally met in Liberia, but the variety is smaller than in the United States, and, except in chronic cases, or much weakened organisms, convalescence in cases of attack by such diseases seems much more rapid. The weather in this climate never reaches very great heat. The average extreme ther-mometrical state is generally set down at 65° and 90° y the average height of the mercury during the rainy season about 76°, and during the dry season about 81°; mean temperature for the year at about 80°.
In regard to comparative healthiness of the two seasons, the rainy season is thought most conducive to health.
This is a short synopsis of the climate and natural capacities of that part of the West African coast chosen by expatriated Americans for the purpose of planting upon these shores of Fatherland the banner of untrammeled manhood, and of spreading among their still benighted brethren the softening influences of Christian light and love.
I deem it unnecessary to say to the Department that there can be no radiating force so potent in the civilizing and Christianizing Africa as a Christian commonwealth, a religious negro nationality, under the auspicious control of democratic institutions of government.
Whatever may be the present condition of affairs in the republic of Liberia, it must be admitted that Liberia has been signally instrumental in assisting to create upon this coast what is destined soon to be the permanent confluence of Christian civilization and heathenish superstition. It is now one-half century since, aided by Christian philanthropy, those forming the germ of what is now the republic of Liberia rested their traveled feet upon this territory, and about two and a half decades since, forced by increased responsibilities and growing interests, Liberia emerged from the colonial crucible into the more healthful atmosphere of national independence. From the beginning the people of Liberia zealously gave themselves to the attainment of the objects of their mission. They not only planted the asylum they sought to found, but essentially aided in the effectual suppression of the slave-trade along their coast, and proved auxiliary to the propagation of Christian truth among the aborigines within their territory. They have framed the outline of a system by which to govern themselves.
In the four counties of Liberia there are in embryo thirteen towns or villages, several of which (especially the capital) are incorporated and enjoy municipal laws.
The republic of Liberia is now in treaty relations with the governments of England, France, North German Union, Holland, Hayti, Portugal, Austria, Italy, Denmark, and the United States. Liberia usually keeps diplomatic and consular representatives near the governments of Great Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Hamburg, Hayti, and the United States, and is at this time honored with diplomatic or consular representatives from the governments of Hayti, North German Union, and the United States.
The political parties of Liberia are at present classed under two heads, to wit: Those opposed to the erasure by amendment of that provision in the constitution excluding white persons from citizenship, and from acquiring ownership of real estate in Liberia, and who favor the relief of the nation’s financial embarrassments by means of foreign loan. This class [Page 334] or party composed the principal supporters of the late administration. Their opponents favor the removal or erasure by amendment of the above restrictions from the constitution, but are opposed to all foreign loans, and propose to relieve financial embarrassments by general removal of restrictions from ports of entry as well as from the organic system of the nation. By such a course they hope to induce the voluntary entrance of foreign capital into the country, the presence of which they argue would encourage commerce and give impetus and ultimate relief, to the finance of the Government.
The latter party forms the principal supporters of the present administration.
These issues, however, were not more than ostensibly apparent in the campaign from which the recent political disturbances took origin. The Immediate cause of those disturbances is to be found in the fact that the friends of the late administration held the constitution amended so as to extend the existence of said late administration to four instead of two years. Upon the other hand, the supporters of the present administration pronounced such views unconstitutional, and the attempt to enforce them treasonable; hence the late impeachment and other trials, is described by me in former dispatches.
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In larger and more mature governments the recent difficulties experienced in Liberia would have had little or no palpable effect upon channels of industry or the usual quietude of citizens, but in all small and immature governments, especially those whose organisms are democratic, the conscious individual and collective sovereignty of the citizen brings them into such close intimacy that they not only assume a domestic appearance, but might frequently be classed as national families.
Liberia has not proved an exception to this general rule. Already might be noticed the positive want of social confidence that, if encouraged, would have led to the disintegration of society itself. The apprehension of those engaged in the several business and professional pursuits was plainly noticeable. Some declared their intention to quit the country; others have gone. In the palmiest days the condition of the laborer in this country does not seem to me an enviable one. Male labor, for natives, rates from$2 to $4 per month, and for the expatriated Americans, from $4 to $10 per month.
Labor is seldom paid for in money, but in trade goods, such as tobacco, salt, fish, &c.
I may add, dry-goods, or any article of ordinary necessity, is procurable for labor. Thus during the effect of these troubles the sufferings of the laborer will be keenly perceptible. I regret to say that at no period of Liberia’s history does agriculture seem to have been extensively engaged in. This is especially true, notwithstanding the great agricultural resources of the country, and the unfailing remuneration of this evil, together with the fact that Liberia has unquestionable facilities, for and aspires zealously to be a commercial nation.
Those having any comparative competency in this country have principally all acquired the same by pursuing the course of the first settlers, who, in their early day, for many reasons, found it necessary to gain a livelihood by engaging in barter between the native African and the foreign trader. Their posterity seem not to realize the fact that more have sunk from view in thus attempting to follow in the wake of their commercial predecessors than have risen to affluence, or even comfortable financial competency.
[Page 335]Agriculture was much neglected, and the effect of such neglect is beginning to be felt in the increase of the price of the cassada, (the potato of this country,) the scarcity of which has caused an advance of 50 per cent. Rice, a principal domestic staple, is also very scarce.
The financial policy of Liberia seems for many years to have been signally unfortunate. The government has no coin medium of circulation, save the ordinary copper cent. It has therefore been deemed necessary in emergencies to place in circulation a currency which the government promised to redeem with gold. Those issues have long since reached a sum beyond the government’s capacity to redeem. President Roberts in his “inaugural address” complained that the expenditure of the government had been much greater than its income, and, during a conversation held not long since, the President informed me that the government of Liberia would be able to realize scarcely £30,000 of the recent loan.
The President appeared deeply impressed that the government of Liberia had been deeply wronged by those having had charge of matters pertaining to the negotiation of said loan.
We must look for the underlying cause of many of these adverse surroundings to the sad fact that the meager attention given to educational interests is decidedly inadequate to the demand of this people’s absolute necessities.
We must infer from the existence of unexecuted statutory laws that-this neglect of educational interests is caused by want of public funds with which to procure adequate facilities, rather than by absolute disinterestedness.
The schools of Liberia, and the churches also, are almost if not altogether supported by foreign philanthropists. There is in this country, situated at Monrovia, one college in which the ordinary courses of modern and classic studies are taught. This enterprise was begun, established, and, during its entire existence, supported by the energy and money of certain generous individuals and philanthropic associations in the United States, and was on the 23d day of January, A. D. 1862, intrusted to the sole immediate management and direction of eminent and scholarly citizens of Liberia, as officers and professors thereof. There is a primary or preparatory department attached to this college, of which I know but little.
The college course consists of four years; the building is of brick material, and contains, inclusive of library and professors’ rooms, thirty-one rooms, and is capable of accommodating as lodgers twenty-two college students.
The senior professor informs me that there should be, besides these twenty-two lodging students, one hundred student members of the college department with lodgings outside of the building. There are at present but ten members of the college department, to wit: one senior, two sophomore, two junior, and five freshmen students. In the ten years of its life, I am informed that the college has graduated six persons out of some about forty members, more or less. This much has been accomplished at cost, for the first nine years, of $44,100 for teachers and president of school, during which period, my informant stated, the sum total of professors’ salaries was $4,900 per annum, two hundred of which was appropriated annually to preparatory department, the balance to the college. This year’s salary for professors is $1,000 less. Also one professor less. (The $4,900 mentioned above is inclusive of salary for president of school.) Principally all the [Page 336] schools in the country are dependent on the generosity of Christian missions abroad.
All the primary schools that I have been privileged to meet are sadly deficient in the requisites of a successful, or would be successful school.
While the children of the aborigines are brought into the communities under a law providing for their being received as apprentices, they are seldom sent to the schools, but chiefly confined to the domestic chores and the general condition of menials. I do not remember having met one dozen exceptions to the latter rule.
Having, in the preceding portions of this dispatch, entered largely into detailed statements, it shall be the endeavor to avoid tedium in referring to the
future prospects of liberia.
Upon the threshold we encounter the necessity of “judging the future by the experiences of the past.” Although crowded with mishaps and numerous discouraging occurrences, the past supplies reasons for hope that we may yet behold the agricultural resources of Liberia placing her in the prosperous enjoyment of legitimate commerce, and those brilliants, science religion, and reason, dispelling the thick gloom which now retards the nation’s development. In attempting to determine Liberia’s future none will deny the legitimacy of comparison with the experiences of other nations similarly situated 5 but we find in all history no instance with which to compare Liberia. We cannot approach the colonial settlements of the United States; the contrast between the materials with which the colonies of the two countries were peopled, strong enough to exclude all reasonable comparison. Seven centuries of civilization had found a culminating point in the fathers of the American Republic.
Those men who first settled the Liberian colony were an extract from centuries of barbarism, and from other centuries of thralldom. The one had succeeded in reducing the science of government to the greatest utility to man. The other, aside from a deep-seated love for liberty, brought to the work nothing but a degraded manhood and a wealth of illiterate inexperience. Between the two there is no possible comparison. We are therefore forced to look within Liberia for the causes both of her misfortunes and the prospects of her future. We find in her, as in all other cases, “the primal causes shine aloft like the stars;” depressed intellect has, to a great extent, relieved her individuals of manly self-reliance. Whether a misfortune or a fault, this is still a fact. I think there is no record showing that any people have, of their own effort and without auxiliary influence, climbed from barbarism to civilization; but in every case the rays of light have been contributed from without. Caesar’s army contained a general contribution of the collected civilizing influence of the several nations, and his impetuous dash across the Rubicon gave to Western Europe the germ of what has since become modern civilization. None would deprive Liberia of beneficent and necessary aid from without, but all would have that aid so applied as to enlighten the undebased manhood of the aborigine and develop the latent energies of the civilized Liberian.
Past experience shows Liberia’s need to be men, education, and wealth; these alone can give her sound policy and successful government.
To the attainment of these requisites the devoted energies and money of American philanthropists have been for fifty years employed. What they have accomplished we have seen. Their immediate policy has been to emigrate exiled Africans to Liberia. Now that such signal [Page 337] changes have occurred in the United States with reference to the condition of this class of persons the wisdom of continuing such a policy is thought by many at least to be questionable. While none would discourage such a desire to leave the United States for Liberia, all must concede that the number who desire to leave is comparatively small, and of a class whose degraded manhood and absolute dependence but ill adapts them to the wants of the primary economy of a young and aspiring democratic goverment. Many of those who come here are lured by impossible hopes, and possess disposition rather to acquire affluence and ease than to realize successful empire. Of an emigration that arrived in December, 1871, numbering two hundred and forty-three persons, forty-five or fifty persons have died of fever, many are acclimating, thirty-five or forty are intending to return, the remainder are quite despondent, and those who remain here will be little else than a burden to the country. I think it quite certain that the future success of Liberia depends greatly more than on any other thing upon the amount of immediate, close, and practical attention given by generous philanthropists to the indigenous aborignes, whose wholly unperverted manliness has never been degraded by unfavorable contrast, whose faith in himself and his race is not weakened by dependence.
It is evident here, as elsewhere, that the beginning of civilization must be brought from foreign countries; but the superstructure must be erected of indigenous material. The completion of the work belongs to the indigenous Inhabitant himself.
If future prosperity would be secured to this land, its friends at home and abroad should apply their efforts to the improvement of and incorporation into this state the aborigines, rather than to indiscriminate accessions from abroad.
Thus they would establish a confidence with surrounding tribes that would develop an interior commerce, stretching to the gold-mines and Arabic scholarship of the Mandingo tribe of Mohammedan Africans, who should, by all means, be incorporated into the Liberian State. They now reside upon Liberian territory.
The policy of educating in foreign lands the aborigine children has been successfully adopted by European philanthropists.
In the cases of Sierra Leone, Lagos, and other successful colonies, this policy has proved eminently successful; the young natives return, and in their turn become teachers and missionaries; thus many thousands have been fully civilized.
In the adoption of such a policy lies Liberia’s most direct route to developed nationality; her grandest prospects for the future. Whatever may be the future policy of the republic of Liberia, this fact is self-evident: God’s economy wastes nothing.
Situation, climate, products, soil, and numerous peculiarities both of the people and the country, conspire to evidence that He manifestly not only intends the evangelization of Africa to be effected contemporaneous with her civilization, but that the “man of these tropics must elevate the man of these tropics.”
I have &c,