p, and
sawpit, placing at the head of each, a Monrovian colonist to instruct
my slaves. In the mean time the neighboring natives, as well as the
people some distance in the interior, were apprised by my runners of
the new factory I was forming at Cape Mount.

By the return of the dry season our establishment gave signs of
renewed vitality. Within the fences of New Florence there were already
twenty-five buildings and a population of one hundred, and nothing was
wanting but a stock of cattle, which I soon procured from the Kroo
country.

Thus, for a long time all things went on satisfactorily, not only with
the natives, but with foreign traders and cruisers, till a native war
embarrassed my enterprise, and brought me in contact with the enemies
of King Fana-Toro, of whose realm and deportment I must give some
account.

CHAPTER LXXI.

The Africans who cluster about the bold headland of Cape
Mount,--which, in fair weather, greets the mariner full thirty miles
at sea,--belong to the Vey tribe, and are in no way inferior to the
best classes of natives along the coast. Forty or fifty families
constitute "a town," the government of which is generally in the hands
of the oldest man, who administers justice by a "palaver" held in
public, wherein the seniors of the settlement are alone consulted.
These villages subject themselves voluntarily to the protectorate of
larger towns, whose chief arbitrates as sovereign without appeal in
all disputes among towns under his wardship; yet, as his judgments are
not always pleasing, the dissatisfied desert their huts, and,
emigrating to another jurisdiction, build their village anew within
its limits.

The Veys of both sexes are well-built, erect, and somewhat stately.
Their faith differs but little from that prevalent among the Soosoos
of the Rio Pongo. They believe in a superior power that may be
successfully invoked through _gree-grees_ and _fetiches_, but which is
generally obstinate or mischievous. It is their idea that the good are
rewarded after death by transformation into some favorite animal; yet
their entire creed is not subject to any definite description, for
they blend the absurdities of Mahometanism with those of paganism, and
mellow the whole by an acknowledgment of a supreme deity.

The Vey, like other _uncontaminated_ Ethiopians, is brought up in
savage neglect by his parents, crawling in perfect nakedness about the
villages, till imitation teaches him the