hat you will bless the day, and your children
after you, when you determined to become citizens of Liberia.

But we do not hold this language on the blessing of liberty, for
the purpose of consoling ourselves for the sacrifice of health,
or the suffering of want, in consequence of our removal to
Africa. We enjoy health after a few months' residence in the
country as uniformly, and in as perfect a degree, as we possessed
that blessing in our native country. And a distressing scarcity
of provisions, or any of the comforts of life, has for the last
two years been entirely unknown, even to the poorest persons in
this community. We never hoped, by leaving America, to escape the
common lot of mortals--the necessity of death to which the just
appointment of Heaven consigns us. But we do expect to live as
long, and pass this life with as little sickness as yourselves.

The true character of the African climate is not well understood
in other countries. Its inhabitants are as robust, as healthy, as
long lived, to say the least, as those of any other country.
Nothing like an epidemic has ever appeared in this colony; nor
can we learn from the natives, that the calamity of a sweeping
sickness ever yet visited this part of the continent. But the
change from a temperate to a tropical country is a great one; too
great, not to affect the health more or less,--and in the cases
of old people and very young children, it often causes death. In
the early years of the colony, want of good houses, the great
fatigues and dangers of the settlers, their irregular mode of
living, and the hardships and discouragements they met with,
greatly helped the other causes of sickness, which prevailed to
an alarming extent, and was attended with great mortality. But we
look back to those times as to a season of trial long past, and
nearly forgotten:--our houses and circumstances are now
comfortable, and for the last 2 or 3 years, not one person in
forty, from the Middle and Southern States has died, from the
change of climate.

People, now arriving, have comfortable houses to receive them,
will enjoy the regular attendance of a Physician in the slight
sickness that may await them; will be surrounded and attended by
healthy and happy people who have borne the effects of the