If experimental knowledge, my Lord, attaches any force to the observations
I now submit to your Lordship, I have to premise, that they are the result
of recent personal investigation, and are a summary of remarks detailed in
journals of a very excursive observation on the Windward Coast of Africa,
and a peculiar facility of intercourse with the chiefs and native tribes of
a widely extended circle, from which I am returned, by the West Indies, in
the late fleet under the convoy of his Majesty's frigate La Seine, and
Merlin sloop of war.

As a preliminary introduction, permit me to refer your Lordship to the
annexed copy of a letter, (Appendix No. II.) which I ventured to address to
the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, dated 1st
May, ultimo, in which is exemplified the present state of commerce from the
Island of Goree to Cape Palmas. Vide page 54.

Conclusive as this example may be of its magnitude, yet it is infinitely
below its attainable increase. The want of naval protection, and the
patronage of government, has greatly fettered it, and exposed the property
engaged therein, to the incursions and destructive depredations of the
enemy.

Connected with its present extent, the Gambia, the Rio Pongo, the river
Sierra Leone, and the rivers adjacent to Cape Palmas, abound with the
greatest variety of the most lucrative and rare objects of commercial
pursuit, namely, indigo, numerous plants for staining, pepper, cotton, and
a multifarious enumeration of dormant productions, besides timber of
various kinds, adapted to the building of ships destined to tropical
climates, having the peculiar quality of resisting the worm, so ruinous to
shipping, and corroding iron; it may be cut into planks of 20 feet by 15
inches, and may be procured in any quantity.

A retrospective view therefore, my Lord, displays a fruitful field to
commercial enterprise, to the attention of civilized nations, to the
naturalist, and to the metaphysician, requiring united interference only,
to unfold and fertilize them; which in effect, would tend to enfranchise a
kindred species, absorbed in barbarism, and preserve, uninterrupted, our
commercial advantages with this extraordinary and important quarter of the
globe.

It is, certainly, my Lord, a subject of the deepest regret to the
philanthropist, that among the Africans, a devoted race is consigned to the
galling fetters of slavery by their inhuman customs, by their barbarous