AT HOME AND ABROAD.

In treating this part of the subject I shall do my best to avoid
bitterness and harsh judging as far as the duty of a traveller--that of
telling the whole truth--permits me. It is better for both writer and
reader to praise than to dispraise. Most Englishmen know negroes of pure
blood as well as 'coloured persons' who, at Oxford and elsewhere, have
shown themselves fully equal in intellect and capacity to the white races
of Europe and America. These men afford incontestable proofs that the
negro can be civilised, and a high responsibility rests upon them as the
representatives of possible progress. But hitherto the African, as will
presently appear, has not had fair play. The petting and pampering
process, the spirit of mawkish reparation, and the coddling and
high-strung sentimentality so deleterious to the tone of the colony, were
errors of English judgment pure and simple. We can easily explain them.

The sad grey life of England, the reflection of her climate, has ever
welcomed a novelty, a fresh excitement. Society has in turn lionised the
_marmiton_, or assistant-cook, self-styled an 'Emir of the Lebanon;' the
Indian 'rajah,' at home a _munshi_, or language-master; and the 'African
princess,' a slave-girl picked up in the bush. It is the same hunger for
sensation which makes the mob stare at the Giant and the Savage, the Fat
Lady, the Living Skeleton, and the Spotted Boy.

Before entering into details it will be necessary to notice the history of
the colony--an oft-told tale; yet nevertheless some parts will bear
repetition.
[Footnote: The following is its popular chronology:--
1787. First settlers (numbering 460) sailed.
1789. Town burnt by natives (1790?).
1791. St. George's Bay Company founded.
1792. Colonists (1,831) from Nova Scotia.
1794. Colony plundered by the French.
1800. Maroons (560) from Jamaica added.
1808. Sa Leone ceded to the Crown; 'Cruits' introduced.
1827. Direct government by the Crown.]

According to Pere Labat, the French founded in 1365 Petit Paris at
'Serrelionne,' a town defended by the fort of the Dieppe and Rouen
merchants. The official date of the discovery is 1480, when Pedro de
Cintra, one of the gentlemen of Prince Henry 'the Navigator,' visited the
place, after his employer's death A.D. 1463. In 1607 William Finch,
merchant, found the names of divers Englishmen inscribed on the rocks,
especially Thos. Candish, or Cavendish, Captain Lister,