n of trade-goods, and set sail one fine morning for this
outpost at Digby. I designed, also, if advisable, to erect another
receiving _barracoon_ under the lee of Cape Mount.

But my call at Digby was unsatisfactory. The pens were vacant, and our
merchandise squandered _on credit_. This put me in a very
uncomfortable passion, which would have rendered an interview between
"Mr. Powder" and his agent any thing but pleasant or profitable, had
that personage been at his post. Fortunately, however, for both of us,
he was abroad carousing with "a _king_;" so that I refused landing a
single yard of merchandise, and hoisted sail for the next village.

There I transacted business in regular "ship-shape." Our rum was
plenteously distributed and established an _entente cordiale_ which
would have charmed a diplomatist at his first dinner in a new capital.
The naked blackguards flocked round me like crows, and I clothed their
loins in parti-colored calicoes that enriched them with a plumage
worthy of parrots. I was the prince of good fellows in "every body's"
opinion; and, in five days, nineteen newly-"_conveyed_" darkies were
exchanged for London muskets, Yankee grog, and Manchester cottons!

My cutter, though but twenty-seven feet long, was large enough to stow
my gang, considering that the voyage was short, and the slaves but
boys and girls; so I turned my prow homeward with contented spirit and
promising skies. Yet, before night, all was changed. Wind and sea rose
together. The sun sank in a long streak of blood. After a while, it
rained in terrible squalls; till, finally, darkness caught me in a
perfect gale. So high was the surf and so shelterless the coast, that
it became utterly impossible to make a lee of any headland where we
might ride out the storm in safety. Our best hope was in the cutter's
ability to keep the open sea without swamping; and, accordingly, under
the merest patch of sail, I coasted the perilous breakers, guided by
their roar, till day-dawn. But, when the sun lifted over the
horizon,--peering for an instant through a rent in the storm-cloud,
and then disappearing behind the gray vapor,--I saw at once that the
coast offered no chance of landing our blacks at some friendly town.
Every where the bellowing shore was lashed by surf, impracticable even
for the boats and skill of Kroomen. On I dashed, therefore, driving
and almost burying the cutter, with loosened reef, till we came
opposite Monrovia; where, sa