, vol. 1. p. 197, sect. v. Moffat's
Southern Africa; Uncivilized Races of Men, vol 1. pp. 183-219.

[100] Savage Africa, p. 287, _sq._

CHAPTER IX.

SIERRA LEONE.

ITS DISCOVERY AND SITUATION.--NATURAL BEAUTY.--FOUNDING OF A
NEGRO COLONY.--THE SIERRA LEONE COMPANY.--FEVER AND
INSUBORDINATION.--IT BECOMES AN ENGLISH PROVINCE--CHARACTER
OF ITS INHABITANTS.--CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, ETC.

Sierra Leone was discovered and named by Piedro de Cintra. It is a
peninsula, about thirty miles in length by about twenty-five in
breadth, and is situated 8 deg. and 30' north latitude, and is about
13-1/2 deg. west longitude. Its topography is rather queer. On the south
and west its mountains bathe their feet in the Atlantic Ocean, and on
the east and north its boundaries are washed by the river and bay of
Sierra Leone. A range of mountains, co-extensive with the
peninsula,--forming its backbone,--rises between the bay of Sierra
Leone and the Atlantic Ocean, from two to three thousand feet in
altitude. Its outlines are as severe as Egyptian architecture, and the
landscape view from east or west is charming beyond the power of
description. Freetown is the capital, with about twenty thousand
inhabitants, situated on the south side of Sierra Leone River, and
hugged in by an amphitheatre of beautiful hills and majestic
mountains.

"On the side of the hill [says Mr. Reed] which rises behind
the town is a charming scene, which I will attempt to
describe. You have seen a rural hamlet, where each cottage
is half concealed by its own garden. Now convert your linden
into graceful palm, your apples into oranges, your
gooseberry-bushes into bananas, your thrush which sings in
its wicker cage into a gray parrot whistling on a rail; ...
sprinkle this with strange and powerful perfumes; place in
the west a sun flaming among golden clouds in a
prussian-blue sea, dotted with white sails; imagine those
mysterious and unknown sounds, those breathings of the
earth-soul, with which the warm night of Africa rises into
life,--and then you will realize one of those moments of
poetry which reward poor travellers for long days and nights
of naked solitude."[101]

In 1772 Lord Mansfield delivered his celebrated opinion on the case of
the Negro man Sommersett, whose master, having abandoned him in a
sick condition, afterwards sought to reclaim him. The deci