LETTER IX

SIERRA LEONA, Aug. 25th, 1792.

My Dear Friend,

You must not promise yourself either instruction or entertainment from this letter, for my strength of body and mind are so debilitated by a severe fit of illness that with much ado I could summon resolution enough to take up my pen or prevail on myself to write you a syllable by this opportunity, but having made a beginning (which is equal to half the task), I shall now endeavour to spin out what I can.

I was confined three weeks with a violent fever, stoneblind four days, and expecting every moment to be my last; indeed I most miraculously escaped the jaws of death. Fortunately just as I was taken sick, a Phisician arrived, to whose attention and skill I consider myself principally indebted for my recovery.¹ I am yet a poor object, and being under the necessity of having my head shaved, tends to increase my ghastly figure. You will readily guess it was very humbling and provoking for me to loose my fine head of hair, which I always took so much pride in, but I cannot help it, and must thank God my life is preserved.

Stricken herself finally, Anna Maria is shocked by the speed with which one can sicken and die on this soggy hillside. All the pride she expressed earlier over her robust health has been erased by this sudden encounter with mortality. As she recovers slowly, her outlook is invaded by a growing infusion of humility. Perhaps bragging does tempt fate and would best be abandoned.

A few weeks since arrived the Calypso from Bulam with a number of disappointed adventurers who went to that Island. They came here in expectation of finding accommodation for a part of them during the rainy season, who meant afterwards to return to Bulam. But they entertained wrong notions of our Colony when they supposed we had it in our power to accommodate them, for most of our own gentlemen are obliged to sleep on ship board for want of houses or lodging on shore.

The adventurers seem vexed at being thus defeated in their expectations and intend returning to England in the Calypso when she sails, which will be shortly. Perhaps you have not heard of the Bulam expedition before, and I can give you but a very imperfect account of it. However, I will laconically tell you what I know. A Mr. Dalrymple was engaged by the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company to come out as governor of this colony; but they disagreed from some trifling circumstance, [Mr. Dalrymple had asked the Sierra Leone Company to send 150 soldiers to protect his new colony; the Directors told him he could have 15] and Mr. Dalrymple feeling himself offended, set on foot (towards the latter end of last year) a subscription for forming a settlement on the Island I am speaking of, in opposition to the Sierra Leone Company. A number of speculators soon associated, subscribed to Mr. Dalrymple's plan, and I fancy, prematurely set about the completion of its objects before they had well digested the theory or accumulated a sufficient fund to ensure success.² Be that as it may, they purchased a small sloop, chartered the Calypso and another ship, engaged numbers of needy persons, who with many of the subscribers personally embarked in the enterprize and placing themselves under the direction of Mr. Dalrymple and a few others, sailed from England in April last, and arrived at Bulam in June.

I understand they were all novices in the arts and modes requisite for attaining their wished for possession, which was unfortunate, for their ignorance led them into an error that proved fatal to several. Although the island of Bulam was uninhabited, it was claimed by persons residing in the adjacent Islands, who by some means or other learnt the errand of the adventurers, and to prevent them from getting a footing without consent of the proprietors, secretly landed a party of men on the Island where they for several days watched the motions of Mr. Dalrymple's people, between thirty and forty of whom, having disembarked and landed (without any previous ceremony according to the custom of the country), the natives took the first opportunity to catch them off their guard, fell upon them, killed five men and one woman, wounded two men, carried off three or four women and children, and obliged the remainder to return to their ship.

After this Mr. Dalrymple went to the neighbouring Island of Bissao, belonging to the Portuguese, where he, through the medium of a merchant of that country, became acquainted with the measures he should have adopted at first, and having courted the friendship of the native chiefs and made them sensible of his peaceable and honorable intentions, they restored the women and children uninjured and gave him possession of the Island for some trifling acknowledgement I have not yet ascertained.

After this Mr. Dalrymple fell sick, and many of the emigrants foreseeing frightful hardships which they were unwilling to encounter during the present rains, he and they resolved to return to England, but first to come hither for the purpose I before mentioned. The Island is not altogether abandoned; a Lieutenant Beaver of the Navy, with a few people remain upon it.³ Since their arrival here many of them have died and the ship is just now very sickly. So much for Bulam.⁴

Now I must say something of ourselves, which I have the heartfelt satisfaction of telling you before hand will be more cheerful and satisfactory than any thing I have heretofore said. By the last ship Mr. Clarkson received instructions from the Directors vesting him with more ample powers than he held before. This was much to be wished for and its beneficial effects are already visible.⁵

Directly after getting this enlargement of authority, Mr. Clarkson invited all the gentlemen and ladies in the Colony [the white officials, that is] to dine at a mess-house built for the gentlemen who came out in the Sierra Leone Packet. Every one that was well enough gladly attended to celebrate a meeting which was intended to give birth to pleasantness, unanimity, and perpetual harmony, and to deface every thing to the contrary that previously existed in the Colony: The day I am told (for being sick at the time, I could not be there) was spent as it should be, with every demonstration of satisfaction by all parties, and the house was named Harmony Hall, by which name it is now, and I suppose ever will be known while a stick of it stands. This house and the one I have are all the buildings yet finished (I mean for the Whites), but several others are about it.

Anna Maria does not tell us that Isaac DuBois was responsible for building Harmony Hall.⁶ Before her illness, dud she come ashore regularly to watch it taking shape? Did DuBois stop for a moment’s respite, stroll up the slope to where she sits on a rock under her parasol and drop down beside her? He would wipe his damp forehead with the full sleeve of his shirt, flash her a glimpse of wonderfully even white teeth, and ask her how she does. Surely these brief chats make her ridiculously light-hearted, but she hides her pleasure, and never admits the slightest hint of being drawn to DuBois.

The Colony is growing healthier every day; most of the Blacks are able to turn out to work. The men are employed in the Company's service and receive two shillings per day wages, out of which they pay four shillings per week for their provisions. The women are occupied in attending their little gardens, and rearing poultry.

The natives daily grow more intimate with us and are constantly bringing in fruits of different kinds, but seldom any livestock unless now and then a few fowls, or perhaps a goat, which they barter away for cloath, soap, or spirits. Every moon-light night we hear the drums of King Jemmy's town, which is scarcely half a mile from hence. This music of our neighbours for a long time after we arrived used frequently to alarm the Colony; but by custom it has become familiar. For several months King Jemmy could not be persuaded to come into Free Town; but at last being prevailed upon and relishing his reception, he now repeats his visits so often as to be very troublesome. Whenever he comes, a boy attends him with a pair of horseman's pistols, loaded, and I will not be surprised if he does mischief with them some day or other, for he never returns home until he has drank a sufficient quantity of rum or brandy to kindle his savage nature for any manner of wickedness.

The pagan drumming and dancing through the long reaches of the night seem like mere drunken orgies in Anna Maria’s Puritan mind. She cannot glimpse in those shadowy throbbing tapestries of sound and movement the appeal to higher powers that parallel the supplications Anna Maria makes silently on her knees in her church pew.

She believes in heavenly rewards, but her concept of life after death is a much more stereotyped one than the straightforward belief of the Africans that a deserving or meritorious life is rewarded with a high station in the spirit world of the village, where the dead live on. Nor could she dismiss casually, had she understood, the satisfaction an African might contemplate in receiving perpetual adulation from the living once he has achieved a position of importance among the spirits.

As she lays in her narrow cabin aboard an English sailing ship in the harbor, she is thankful that Falconbridge no longer joins her there, demanding his marital rights. She ponders her odd situation, a woman married but alone and far away from home, as she listens to the nightly throbbing of drums from King Jemmy's town. The sound annoys her, for it has a persistent, inescapable quality as steady as heartbeats, and the muffled sequence echoing through the stillness of the African night unfolds in an endless irritating monotony. She hears it inside her head long after the drums have fallen silent. It does not lull or stupify her as it does the Africans who immerse themselves joyfully in the rhythm, and her fury mounts as she lies tense, listening, yet striving vainly not to hear.

In August, a few months after the arrival of the Freetown settlers, the Africans perform the rituals which always accompany the planting of the new crop. The indigenous people know that their earth is ready to be fertilized because the ground orchids are blooming their great purple spikes and the six-inch centipedes with their shivery poisonous feet have emerged from their cocoons. No seed can be planted, however, without first offering the proper supplications to the ancestral spirits to nourish the soil that sustains the crops.

Anna Maria has seen in the rough-slashed, burned-off patches near King Jemmy's town the small ‘shimbecks’, huts of sticks and palm fronds containing part of an ant hill and graced with a miniature seed bed of rice before the door. A broken hoe lies there, and within, small soapstone figures of men and animals stand on the altar. Dogs sniff among the cock feathers and blood stains from a ceremonial sacrifice and the small offering of red rice. All these are symbolic pleas to the benevolent power of the spirits who can, if they choose, cast their weight against the unpredictable forces of nature, mitigating man's presumption in disturbing and abusing the earth in his need to obtain sustenance.

The last ship brought out a large house of one hundred feet in length, which is to be erected in the vicinity of the town as an hospital; but the people being mostly on the recovery, I think it would be more advisable to erect it as a store-house and thereby not only save the Company's valuable property, which is just now perishing for want of shelter; but would serve as a repository for vending many goods that are wasting on board of ships, which would greatly contribute to our comfort, and which we are deprived of from not having a proper place where they might be exposed to sale. And again, I do not think our Blacks will submit to be sent to an hospital. Therefore the intention will be frustrated; however, the house is so constructed that it can be put up or taken down in a few hours, consequently may at any time hereafter be removed; and we understand several houses of the same kind are expected in two large ships, which are hourly looked for.

Since the rains we have been sadly infested by a variety of insects, but more particularly cockroaches and ants. The latter come from their nests in such formidable force as to strike terror wherever they go. You will think it strange that such an insignificant insect as the ant is in England should be able, in another country, to storm the habitations of people and drive out the inhabitants; but I pledge my veracity to you. I have known them in one night [to] force twelve or fourteen families from their houses, who were obliged to make use of fire and boiling water to destroy them, which are the only weapons we can attack them with that will effectually check their progress.⁷

Musquetos [sic] are not so troublesome here as I have felt them elsewhere; but we have a perpetual croaking of frogs and buzzings of various vermin, very discordant and unpleasant to the ear of a person in perfect health, yet much more so to those who are sick.

There has been several large serpents killed in the Colony, but none of the overgrown size Lieutenant Mathews and other authors mention.⁸ The largest I have heard of measured nine feet in length. We have been twice visited by some ferocious wild beast, supposed to be a tyger [sic]. The last time it was attacked by two mastiffs of ours, who were beat off and materially injured. One of my poor domestics, a very heavy Newfoundland dog, had his throat terribly lacerated; the other, I imagine, fought shy, as he came off with little damage.

Anna Maria has two large dogs, not mentioned before. Did she bring them with her?

There are many good hunters among our Settlers, through whom we sometimes get wild deer or pork; the latter is a coarse unpleasant food. I lately had a haunch, the hide of which was full an inch and an half thick; the former is meagre, dry meat, very unlike your English venison, but such as it is, we are glad when it comes in our way.

Some little time ago an accident happened [to] one of the most expert hunters we have, which has considerably lessened our supply of game. He was laying in ambush near where he knew a deer frequented; another person in pursuit of the same, passing hard by and hearing the rustling of leaves, immediately fired into the thicket from whence the noise proceeded and lodged the greater contents of his gun in the head and right shoulder of his unfortunate rival, but not killing him. He brought him home two miles through the wood on his shoulder. Falconbridge extracted several of the shot and thinks he may recover.

Our Botanist and Mineralist have as yet made little proficiency in those branches of natural philosophy.⁹ The confusion of the Colony has retarded them as well as others. They are both Swedes and considered very eminent in their professions.¹⁰ The Mineralist is about to make an excursion into the interior country and is very sanguine in his expectations. He has but slightly explored the country hereabouts and been as slightly rewarded. The only fruits of his researches are a few pieces of iron oar, richly impregnated with magnetism, with which the mountains abound.

The Botanist is preparing a garden for experiments and promises himself much amusement and satisfaction when he can strictly attend to his business. His garden is now very forward, but it is attended with considerable expence; however, a mere nothing, when put into the great scale of Colonial charges, which, including shipping, Officers' salaries, wages of labourers, and provisions, does not amount to less than the enormous sum of one hundred and fifty pounds per day, without naming incidental charges such as presents to natives, daily waste and destruction of property, &c. Those aggregated from the birth of the Company to the present time, may at least be computed at £25,000.¹¹

This is not a supposition of my own, for I have heard it from those who must certainly be informed on the business. But notwithstanding the Company's purse is so much weakened by folly and want of circumspection; if the harmony and good understanding at present existing in the Colony continues, it is yet sufficiently strong, by being applied with method and proper exertions, not only to retrieve their losses and answer their original laudable and magnanimous purposes, but amply requite any pecuniary motives they may have.

Mr. Falconbridge has obtained permission from Mr. Clarkson to commence his commercial career and had selected goods for the purpose, but was checked by illness and is dangerously ill at this moment. If he recovers, his first assay will be on the Gold Coast, where he anticipates success and often says he hopes he shall be able to cheer the despondent Directors by a valuable, unexpected cargo.¹²

Clarkson writes that "Mr. Falconbridge talks of making a trip to purchase stock for the Colony, but from his constant drinking, he has rendered himself incapable of being trusted, and I do all I can to amuse him, in order to keep him quiet; if he had not one of the strongest constitutions, he must have been dead long ago."¹³ The Gold Coast (today called Ghana) was further east along the West African Coast and had been the source of astonishing quantities of gold when the Portuguese were the dominant traders on this coast in the 17th century.

In early August John Clarkson takes a short recuperative cruise, leaving Richard Pepys, the chief engineer, in charge of the colony. Unpopular with the other officers, Pepys only increases their jealousy. Falconbridge is the logical second in command, but he is regularly too drunk to be reliable.

Mr. Clarkson thinks it too early to meddle with trade, from the idea that it will procrastinate the regularity and comfort of the Colony, which he is strenuously endeavouring to establish. But from my slender notion of things, I humbly beg leave to differ from him and rather suppose it would greatly contribute to accelerate his wishes; at least it would not be the smallest hindrance or by any means interfere with our police,¹⁴ which to be sure will not yet bear a scrupulous investigation. However, it is mending, and I dare say, in time, our able, zealous pilot will steer us clear of the labyrinth which he found us entangled in.

May it be so is the earnest wish of, Your's, &c. &c.

* * *

Four months pass before Anna Maria writes her next letter—very eventful months for the new settlement, although not the stuff of travel books. And her recollections in her next letter are not necessarily in the order they occurred. For clarity, the segments of her December 28th letter which occur in earlier months are presented here.

I shall now return to the arrival of the York [on August 30]: in this ship came out the Rev. Mr. Horne and a Mr. Dawes, who is a new appointed member of council.¹⁵ I must not proceed any further till I inform you that the Directors have wholly changed their original system of government, dismounted the old Council, and placed their political reins in the hands of Mr. Clarkson, who is to be assisted by two Counsellors [sic], one of whom is the gentleman I just mentioned, the other is not yet appointed.¹⁶

This new ministry is titled, "the Governor and Council," and are charged with the management of all civil, military, and commercial affairs, but have no authority whatever to interfere in ecclesiastical matters, which are left to the guidance of Mr. Horne or any other Minister for the time being. Time will shew whether this alteration of politics proves propitious; as yet things have not fallen off but rather mended.

Dispatches dispensing with the old eight-member council and containing new authority reach Freetown in August. Now a governor and two councillors will rule, with the governor having power to act, when necessary, without the concurrence of his councillors. Clarkson is greatly relieved, and for a time this restores confidence among the settlers. Tensions might have ended permanently if land had been distributed promptly thereafter, for in the settlers’ minds the delays in land distribution in Freetown are a repetition of the delays in Nova Scotia.

Unfortunately, the hillside between the harbor and the steeper mountain slopes above is simply not large enough to accommodate all the settlers with farms of the size they have been promised. The Sierra Leone peninsula is highest in the north along the harbor, sloping gradually southward to the sea. But any move to flatter land beyond the peaks of the mountains would put the settlers beyond the protection of the armed white officials in Freetown and the few cannon landed from the company ships. The local Africans made it clear during the Granville Town experiment that they are not entirely trustworthy neighbors. Nor can a large enough area along the harbor be cleared quickly enough to satisfy all the settlers. The jungle on the Sierra Leone peninsula is an almost impenetrable wall of huge intertwined trunks and vines, which take time and strong men to hack away. The savage greenery surges again as soon as the workmen turn their backs. Much of the terrain is rocky or hilly. The daily downpour prevents sustained work for weeks on end.

The nearby Africans protest angrily when surveying parties impinge on their villages, rice fields, and sacred shrines. King Naimbana must be summoned to palaver again with the local chiefs. The king’s former secretary, Abraham Elliott Griffith, is now chief interpreter in Freetown—one of the few blacks with some authority. He proves very useful in that role until he sides with Thomas Peters in his dispute with John Clarkson. Thereafter Griffith is no longer invited to dine with the officers.

King Jemmy, Freetown’s nearest neighbor, is not happy with the settlement scheme. He argues that he should have dominion over a holy place above the freshwater spring "to make sacrifices to a large black snake living under one of the trees for the continuance of the spring, which otherwise would dry up and distress the country."¹⁷ Clarkson agrees to skirt King Jemmy’s village of 40 or 50 huts and the adjacent fields, as well as fence the holy place. He also pays 100 bars (a common medium of exchange on the African coast) for a family spoon and a gold cross taken from King Jemmy’s house three years earlier by a marine from HMS Pomona.

Clarkson writes in his journal that he takes "every opportunity to ingratiate myself with them, and to convince the chiefs of our honourable disposition towards them. I told them we would be glad to teach their children book, and to do all in our power to make them have good heads; that it was a good plan when either party felt injured, to call a palaver that a clear explanation might take place; by such conduct we should be sure to live happily together and render each other mutual benefits."¹⁸

The restrictions about impinging on African villages and fields decreases the land available to the Nova Scotians. When this problem becomes clear, the white officials inform the settlers that in the beginning farms would be only one-fifth the promised size—the rest to be claimed at some later date. Neither Clarkson or the directors in London foresee how negatively the settlers will react to this reversal. None of them—directors in London or settlers in freetown—understood yet that farming in Africa would never sustain the Nova Scotians, that shopkeeping and commerce would be the key to their prosperity..

We are and have been frequently much pestered by renegade seamen quiting ships employed in the Slave Trade and refuging here, to the great detriment of their employers and inconvenience of the Colony. The circumstance considerably perplexes Mr. Clarkson, who on the one hand is not only threatened with lawsuits by the masters and owners of ships detained for want of their sailors, but is well convinced of the injury they sustain. On the other, his orders are to protect every man, which leaves him in an aukward [sic] situation and at a loss what to do; however, by way of intimidation to practices of the kind, he had the following notification (which has not availed anything) sent to some of the neighbouring factories, and stuck up in the Colony:

FREE TOWN, SIERRA LEONE, Sept, 3d, 1792.

"This is to give Notice, that I will not on any account, permit Seamen, who may leave their respective Vessels, to take shelter in this Colony; and I shall give orders in future, that the seize Constables seize every man who cannot give a good account of himself, or whom they may suspect to have deserted from their employ. At the same time I shall be always ready to listen to the complaints of every injured man, and shall transmit their affidavits home to England, provided they make application in a proper manner.

(Signed) JOHN CLARKSON."

It is much to be lamented, however desirable the abolition of the Slave Trade may be, while it is sanctioned by the English Government, property of individuals in that trade should be harrassed and annoyed by want of order and regularity in this Colony or by the fanatical prejudices of any set of men. One ship in particular has suffered most essentially, viz. the Fisher, [captained by] Clark, of Liverpool, whose men deserted from her in July last, and though she has had her cargo engaged ever since, she is not yet able to quit the coast for want of seamen; some of whom died and others are now here, employed in the Company's service.¹⁹

On the 26th, 27th, and 28th of September there was an assembly of native Chieftains here, and a Palaver was held for the purpose of ascertaining the limits of the Company's territory.

When the work parties assigned to clearing ground come upon the tiny African settlements hidden in the forest—half a dozen thatch huts with a flock of scratching fowl and an irregular patch of cassava root growing in the dooryards—these meager untidy clearings seem like only a feeble pretense at earning a living, not displaying enough effort in their making to be taken seriously. They give the impression that their occupants are only camping there temporarily, as indeed they are in the sense that half a dozen years hence they will move on to another spot, and their abandoned dwelling place will soon be swallowed up by the tide of green in which it nestles. The European officials are mystified that the Africans should object, and object vociferously, to having the forest around them cleared away to make room for real gardens and farms.

This [palaver] was attended with considerable more expence than Falconbridge's palaver [a year previously] and the consequence far less productive. They finished by curtailing the bounds from twenty miles square (the quantity purchased by Captain Thompson and afterwards confirmed to the St. George's Bay Company) to about two miles and a quarter fronting the sea and running in a direct line back as far as the district of Sierra Leone may be, which is generally supposed not to exceed five or six miles, and three fourths of it a barren, rocky, mountaneous [sic] country where it will be impossible for men who are to earn their bread by agriculture even to support themselves. But admitting it was all good, there is not more than will enable the Company to comply with one-fifth part of their engagements to the blacks brought from America, which proportion is now surveying for them.

There is much that she and the other Englishmen who went to Sierra Leone two hundred years ago could hardly understand. The rain forest gives an impression of enormous fertility. To the eyes of European visitors, the thickness and lushness of the vegetation in that hot humid climate promises rich potential for agriculture. Sierra Leone is originally chosen as a home for freed slaves on the basis of reports written in the 1780s describing the speed and vigor with which trees grow and the ease of cultivation when mere scratching of the surface by the Africans brings a crop within a few weeks.

Appearances are deceptive. Trees grow rapidly because the forest is all that does thrive easily in the wet African tropics. The vision of cultivated fields growing on the same land with vigor to equal the forest's is a cruel illusion. The dense jungle, the mass of roots, the intricate blanket of vine and creeper are the benefactors of the Africa soil rather than the benefitted. When the thick stand of forest which shrouds the landscape is cleared away and the red earth bared, the vigor of the massive waves of green vanishes with the rains.

The soils of Africa are porous; water seeps through them as through a sieve and is absorbed with unbelievable rapidly. A dirt road which disappears under heavy rain emerges high and dry almost within minutes after the sun reappears. But even though the water is transient, it takes its relentless toll. Solubles in the soil, which are the minerals—nitrate, phosphate, and the rest—dissolve and wash through the igneous rock. After countless poundings by heavy rain, only insolubles are left—a dusty red concentration of iron, aluminum, and manganese that is known as laterite. This brittle substance does not nourish crops.

The rains fall year after year with relentless regularity, and their falling controls the dimensions of life and agriculture in Africa. The rains fall and the rivers rise to staggering heights, rushing to the sea laden with thick ribbons of muddy red. The depletion of the thin peninsula soil had already commenced before the Freetown settlers arrived.

The indigenous Africans do not till large areas, because their numbers are thin and scattered and because they cultivate only such crops as they need to guarantee a minimum supply of food. Their apparent disinterest in cultivation is from necessity rather than choice. They know from long experience that the land never yields up a bounty of food, and every plot of ground painfully cleared and tilled soon loses its fertility and returns less and less in payment for the human endeavor expended on it. In three years or five years or seven years at the most, it must be abandoned to fallow. The forest must repossess the land, breaking again the force of the pounding rain, absorbing water, holding and binding the soil, providing natural mulch to fertilize the exhausted earth and pumping back some of the mineral richness washed away into the subsoil, diffusing the sun's heat and dessication, and keeping moist the bed into which nature drops her countless seeds. The Africans know that land which they have cleared for cropping is thereby made useless to them for a quarter of a century, and few men in the 1700s lived longer than twenty-five years after they had reached maturity.

One does not heedlessly ignore deities who demand such stringent penalties for man's depredations. The Africans accept what their gods have decreed, baring the land for their hoes with a frugality that looks like sheer laziness to the Europeans, their apathy greatly abetted by a host of endemic diseases.

This circumstance [the reduction in land available for settler farms], I am persuaded, will hereafter lead to much discontent and uneasiness among the settlers, and, if I do not soothsay wrongly, will shackle those gentlemen who have been the instruments of removing them with such disgrace as they will not easily expunge.

When the Palaver was ended and Naimbana (who presided at it on the part of the natives) was about to return to Robana, Mr. Clarkson, by way of amusing and complimenting the King, took him in a boat with six oarsmen and a cockswain,who rowed them through the fleet in the harbour, consisting of six or seven sail. Each vessel as they past [sic] saluted them with several guns, till they came to the Harpy, when they were not noticed by the smallest token of respect. On the contrary, Captain Wilson called to Mr. Clarkson and told him he had a few words to say to him. Mr. Clarkson replyed [sic], if they were not of much consequence he wish'd to be excused just them—but upon Wilson's assuring him they were of some importance, the Governor complyed with his request and went on board. Captain Wilson then said he was much offended that Mr. Clarkson should take a boats crew from his ship and a cockswain from another. Till that moment Mr. Clarkson had not observed such to be the case and assured Captain Wilson it was done inadvertently, without the slightest intention of giving offence. This acknowledgment was not enough for Captain Wilson, and his temper being irritated, he used some very indiscreet expressions to Mr. Clarkson: such as telling him—"Damn me, Sir, if ever you shall have another boat's crew from my ship, unless you have a cockswain also," &c. &c. The governor was hurt at such language and returned to his boat. King Naimbana enquired of him why that ship did not fired? He answered, "Mrs. Wilson is sick, and the Captain does not like to disturb her with the noise."²⁰

The King then embarked on board the Lapwing Cutter, and went home. When he was gone and the colony clear of all the chiefs, Mr. Clarkson sent a message to Captain Wilson desiring him to make an apology for his unhandsome behaviour, or he (Mr. Clarkson) would be under the necessity of taking steps very repugnant to his inclination. Wilson positively refused, and continuing obstinate two days (wholly engrossed with messages and answers, to and fro), Mr. Clarkson, although a man of humility and condescension, unwilling to brook so gross an insult summoned every gentlemen in the colony to meet him on board the Amy; and when they were collected, wrote a letter summoning Captain Wilson; which summons being disobeyed, he appealed to the assembly, who unanimously determined the delinquent should be dismissed from command of the Harpy; in consequence whereof his dismission, signed by the Governor and Mr. Dawes, was sent immediately.

When the boat that carried it came under the Harpy's stern (being a little after eight at night), she was hailed and asked whither she was bound? "To the Harpy with a letter for Captain Wilson," answered the bearer. "I am desired to inform you [that] no boat will be permitted to come alongside at such an improper hour, and if you proceed a boat's length further, Captain Wilson's orders are to fire on you," replied a voice from the Harpy. These threats not intimidating the boat's crew, two muskets were actually fired on them, but did no mischief; and reaching the ship before another fire, the undaunted messenger attempted to ascend the gangway but was prevented by the ship's company, who cut away the gangway ropes and beat him off with cutlasses, sticks, &c.

Captain Wilson having learnt the purport of this letter from some person who afterwards went on board, declared he would not be removed from his ship with life, and he would blow out that man's brains who dared attempt to enforce him!

This boisterous disposition subsided by the following day when his dismission, with minutes of every gentleman's opinion who had been at the meeting over night, were sent him. He then persisted that he would not tamely leave his ship, but if any person authorised forcibly attempted to take him out, he would make no unlawful resistance. Mr. Dawes volunteered this duty, went on board, and after in vain persuading Wilson not to put him to the unpleasant task of using violence, he took him by the collar and gently led him over the ship's side. When descending into the boat, he called to his officers and men, "Observe, I am forced out of my ship." He was then conducted to the York, where he was informed his residence would be until an opportunity offered to send him to England.

This fracas being thus quieted, perfect harmony otherwise subsisting among us, and Mr. Clarkson having some idea of returning to Europe, wished before hand to furnish Mr. Dawes with a trial of his influence among the blacks and individual management of the colony; and judging a trip to sea for a few weeks would be the best means of affording such an opportunity, he sailed in the Amy on the 2d of October, in company with a small brig of the Sierra Leone Company's then bound home to England; but in which Mr. and Mrs. Wilson could not take their passage, the accommodations being previously disposed of.

Clarkson is having memory lapses and realizes that he needs to get away from the endless demands of Freetown. He takes Falconbridge along in the hope of improving his health. Although he intends to be gone only a week, he writes Dawes a voluminous letter, containing a long list of instructions covering everything from how to keep accounts of the ships’ stores; record births, christenings, marriages, and deaths; distribute provisions to work parties; and lay out lands plots, to raising guns from the sea bottom, building a bath house, and being circumspect in extending credit to the settlers.²¹

When Mr. Clarkson sailed, he desired Captain Wilson might be informed [that] he was not to consider himself a prisoner, but at liberty to conduct himself as he pleased and visit any where he liked except the Harpy, which ship he was strictly prohibited from putting his foot on board.

In about three weeks Mr. Clarkson returned. A multiplicity of complaints were then poured into him by the Settlers against Mr. Dawes, whose austere, reserved conduct (so reverse to the sweet manners of the other) they could not possibly relish, and, consequently, all hopes or expectations of the latter gaining popularity proved abortive. It may not be mal-a-propos to mention here that Mr. Dawes is a subaltern of Marines; that the prejudices of a rigid military education has been heightened by his having served some time at Botany Bay,²² where no doubt it is necessary for gentlemen to observe an awful severity in their looks and actions; but such behaviour, however suitable for a Colony formed wholly of Convicts and governed by the iron rod of despotism, should be scrupulously guarded against in one like this, whose basis is Liberty and Equality, and whose Police is dependant, in great measure, if not altogether, on the whimsical disposition of an ignorant populace, which can only be advantageously tempered by placidness and moderation.

Anna Maria pauses to scratch a mosquito bite. That last phrase pleases her as being very felicitous. She muses on how unplacid and immoderate William Dawes really is. Every time she sees him, brow sweaty, striding furiously in the tropical heat, looking so imperiously important, she wants to poke him to see if he would either pause or protest, display any natural feelings at all.

The Directors having ordered home the Harpy when she could be spared from the Colony, Mr. Clarkson, on his return, desired she might be expeditiously fitted for sea, and on the 28th of last month, being Sunday and most of the Colony piously engaged, Captain Wilson, knowing she was nearly ready, availed himself of the chance, and through the means of her boat that came under pretence of giving him an airing, replaced himself, by consent of his Officers and crew, in command of his ship, and immediately after divine service, Mr. Clarkson received the following letter from him.

November 18, 1792.

SIR,

I apprehend it is needless to inform you I have taken possession of the Harpy, and mean, in defiance of all opposition, to carry her to England.

As I should be very sorry to be exceeded in politeness on this occasion,²³ I write this to ask your commands for London, intending to sail immediately. Nevertheless, Sir, if within an hour I receive an answer assuring me of your pacific intentions, signed by yourself and Mr. Dawes, I will wait your orders.

Take care, Sir, how you attempt anything like force; if blood is shed, be it upon your head. Wishing you more prudence and better advisers,

I remain, Sir,

Your most humble Servant,

T. H. WILSON

This was a step so unlooked for that it puzzled the Governor and Council how to conduct themselves. After some deliberation, they determined not to answer Captain Wilson's letter, and the time he limited having elapsed, we saw the Harpy under the guns of the York and under the guns of the Battery, get under way and triumphantly sail off.

Various opinions prevailed respecting the propriety of Captain Wilson's repossessing himself of the Harpy. Some said it was an act of piracy, and they were certain he would never take her to England; but others judged less harshly, with whom I join; and, from my knowledge of Captain Wilson, feel myself authorized to say [that] he possesses too great a share of pride and too high sense of honor to shipwreck his character on the rock of infamy—but at the same time I will not aver him inerrable. On the contrary, [I] think his behaviour to Mr. Clarkson monstrous disrespectful and inconsistent, which without doubt he was betrayed into by warmth of temper and too lofty, but wrong notions of punctilio's [sic].

I have been particularly obliged to Captain Wilson. Therefore it would be truly ungenerous, nay, the blackest ingratitude in me mischievously to hint at any thing prejudicial to him, and must beg you not to suppose I have touched upon the subject by way of assailing his character; considering it a circumstance of importance, I could not pass it over in silence. (Should this Narrative meet the eye of Captain Wilson, I trust he will do me the justice to say [that] I have not wandered from the broadway of the truth.)

If the truth be known, Anna Maria is amused by Captain Wilson’s capricious behavior, for it has leavened the pious propriety of the passing days. She is aware that Captain Wilson’s wife and Mrs. Pepys had clashed on the outbound voyage, which led the hot-tempered Captain to feud with all the company officers and refuse to allow his ship to be used as needed.²⁴ Nevertheless, Captain Wilson, although circumspect, has made it clear in inconspicuous ways that he admires Anna Maria’s beauty and spunk and thinks her a great asset in the community. How could she not be grateful to him?

On the 2d instant²⁵ arrived the Felicity from England. I mention the arrival of this vessel because she was expected to bring a number of useful stores for the Colony, in place of which her cargo consisted principally of garden watering pots.²⁶ In her way out she stopped at Gambia and took in several head of cattle, whereby we are now and then indulged with roast beef, the first we have had since our arrival, for the inhabitants here-abouts are too indolent to attend to rearing domestic quadrupeds of any kind. King Naimbana has two or three very fat beeves [sic]; and I think there may be as many more at Bance Island; but before the Felicity arrived, I can venture to say those were all in this part of the country, unless I include a couple of milch cows and a bull brought out from England by the York, which, from the inimical climate, died in a very short time. These brought from Gambia are thin, the flesh dark and coarse, and only the name of beef as a recommendation. Mutton and goat's flesh are the most preferable in their kinds; indeed, the former, though not overloaded with fat, I think nearly as sweet as our English mutton, but the little we get of them come chiefly from the interior country.

About the latter end of October, the rains began to diminish and for a month past have entirely ceased. They are succeeded by dense, disagreeable, and unwholesome fogs, which are supposed will continue near a month longer. These are termed smoaks and considered more unhealthy than the worst rains, but we cannot say so from experience for the Colony is healthier just now than it has been since the beginning of May. Yet a few deaths happen now and then. Among those who lately died was Mr. Nordenschold, the Mineralist, who was taken ill on the expedition I noticed in my last he was then about to make, and forced to return without acquiring any satisfaction for his journey, which was attended not only with innumerable disadvantages from the time of year, but with many other impediments he did not foresee or expect.

The loss of him is much to be regreted for he was an enterprising clever man, and no doubt had he lived, would have procured a vast deal of useful information.²⁷ The Governor and Council have at last thought it advisable to embark in Agriculture and have purchased a small track of land on the opposite (Bullam) shore. This new undertaking is placed under the management of a man who was some time an Overseer in Dominica and who was a Member of the first Council.²⁸ It is called Clarkson's Plantation, and from the richness and apparent fertility of the soil, much advantage may be looked for, provided no disagreement arises with the natives and a sufficient number of steady labourers can be obtained; but being in its infancy, all we can do at present is to wish it success, which time must determine.

The plantation John Clarkson started on the Bullam shore soon dwindled to four acres planted in coffee, plantains, cinnamon, and mangoes. The cotton plantation started by Isaac DuBois on Thompson’s Bay lapsed until an overseer (paid £60 a year) and 12 African laborers were hired to grow plantain, yams, corn, and coffee. Few of the settlers could amass the necessary capital to copy these examples.²⁹

Three or four new houses are now erected and most of the gentlemen are comfortably lodged. There is a retail shop opened in the Colony from whence we are furnished with such goods as the Directors have sent out, most of which are not only badly adapted for a warm climate, but wretchedly bad in their kind. We have little gold or silver among us; that want is substituted by paper notes, from five dollars down to six-pence, signed by the Governor or Mr. Dawes. The credit of this medium is established by giving bills of exchange to the holders, upon the Directors, at a trifle more than eleven per cent discount, which is only the difference between sterling and currency, a guinea being nominally twenty-three shillings and four-pence here. It is taken in payment for goods at the Company's store, and its reputation is now so good that the neighbouring Factories and casual Traders receive it for what our Settlers purchase for them.

Mr. Clarkson is so convinced the Company have been sadly imposed upon that a few weeks ago he wrote a circular letter to the gentlemen of the Colony acquainting them with his intention of sailing for England very quickly,—requesting their opinion of the various goods that came under their notice,—their general ideas as to the wants of the Colony, and their advice how to prevent abuses being practised on the Company in future.

I saw part of a letter from one gentleman in answer wherein he says, "You have done me the honour of asking my advice how to prevent abuses being practised on the Company in future? In answer to this I shall only say it would be the height of presumption in me to offer an opinion on the subject, being persuaded your own penetration and discernment is sufficient to discover a remedy without the assistance of any one; and if the Directors will attend to your advice upon this as well as every other circumstances respecting the Colony, I am sure they will find their advantage in it."

Had my opinion been asked, I should have said, "Let the Directors shake off a parcel of hypocritical puritans they have about them, who under the cloak of religion are sucking out the very vitals of the company. Let them employ men conversant in trade, acquainted with the coast of Africa, and whose religious tenets have never been noticed. Under this description they will find persons of sound morals, fit to be intrusted, but they will ever be subject to impositions while they employ a pack of canting parasites, who have just cunning enough to deceive them."³⁰

We are in great tribulation about Mr. Clarkson's going away, for Mr. Dawes is almost universally disliked, and more than probable, anarchy and discord will again return in full force among us when the management of things are left to him alone; however, it is wrong to anticipate misfortunes, and our Governor has made every arrangement in his power to prevent intruders of this kind.

Is the "we" above editorial? Or does Anna Maria discuss the imminent departure of their governor with Isaac DuBois? They both admire and respect Clarkson for the sympathetic way he deals with the settlers. Without ever admitting to calculation, wouldn’t Anna Maria and Isaac have found moments when they could sit by themselves in some shady spot and reassure each other with their observations.

Isaac would have had the most to say about Richard Pepys, whom he thoroughly despises. "I’m still annoyed about the letter he wrote to John Clarkson, complaining because I wouldn’t let him have the deals he wanted for the Susan. They were intended for the church floor. Poor John had to ask me to be more pliant in my intercourse with Pepys."³¹ The man is a complete egotist. He sees everything that happens in terms of how it affects him—holds continuous grudges against anyone who crosses him."

"He certainly is hopeless in his personal dealings," Anna Maria agrees. "I find his way of glaring at everyone most distasteful."

"I’ve tried over and over again to appease him, but he turns around and obstructs everything I do."

"It must make you so impatient, having to work with such incompetents."

DuBois shakes his head. "I’ll miss John Clarkson. He is the only one who has a clear, overall picture of what we’re trying to accomplish here."

Anna Maria nods. "I hope he comes back soon. I know he needs a good holiday, but our popinjay William Dawes will be no substitute for him."

"Dawes manages to provoke the settlers every time he turns around."

"Do you think the directors in London have any sense of how unsettled things are here?"

"Clarkson is going there to tell them. No one knows better than he how emotional he settlers get when they are not consulted."

Anna Maria nods. "But will the directors listen to him?"

"That’s the question." Dubois unwinds his long legs and rises to his feet. "Time for me to get back to work." Does he smile down at her, offer a hand, and help her up? Does he hold her hand several moments longer than necessary, then turn away? She watches him walk briskly down the hill. Anna Maria shivers slightly. What a delight to have intelligent conversation with a man who respects her opinions and shares her contempt for their status-greedy colleagues.

The Surveyor³² has assured him [that] the blacks shall have the proportion of land now surveying for them in a fortnight at furthest. Every one has pledged himself to use his utmost efforts to preserve harmony and order during Mr. Clarkson's absence, which we expect will be five or six months; and to insure Mr. Dawes the good will of King Naimbana, he has been allowed to make the King a very considerable present out of the Company's Property.

Adieu, Your's, &c.

* * *

General conditions in Freetown improved gradually as the autumn progressed. The rains diminished in force and frequency, abating the fevers that had stricken so many. Supply ships arrived with much-needed food and tools. Dozens of Africans came daily with the fresh fruit of the new harvest (mangoes, plums, bananas, plantains, limes, lemons, oranges, pineapple, guavas, papayas, and palm oil) and vegetables (yams, beans, pumpkins, cassava, groundnuts, rice, and millet). Pigs and poultry were multiplying. The death of a cow was important enough to be noted in Clarkson’s journal; by mid-November all the cattle are dead. James Watt, the plantation manager, has been examining the soil inland and across the estuary in hopes of establishing larger plantations, and is pessimistic about sugar cane, but hopeful that cotton and indigo might thrive.³³

In November, a drawing is finally held for farm lots: 40 black families receive land grants of about five acres each. On November 13, 1792, the fortunate new landholders join Clarkson and the company officials for a picnic on the way up to Director’s Hill [now Mount Aureol] overlooking the harbor. Dinner is served under a tent, followed by a toast to the Sierra Leone Company and the inhabitants of Freetown and Granville Town. Immediately thereafter the 60 survey workers fire their muskets in "three distinct vollies" and give three cheers, to which the cannons in the town below respond, and the Freetown settlers give three cheers. The company ships anchored in the estuary, their colors flying, respond, "which had a beautiful effect," Clarkson reports, "and I have no doubt made an impression on the whole neighborhood." Clarkson seizes this and every opportunity to "show the natives the armed power we possess."³⁴

Life in Freetown is much more bearable than it was in the spring. Several of the congregations have completed their meeting houses and are proud of their sanctuaries. By the end of 1793 the colony’s 300 school-age children will all be enrolled in classes at eight schools, seven with black teachers (who are often preachers as well), one headed by a European sent from England. The Anglican chaplain is made superintendent of the schools. To ensure some uniformity, all students are examined together once a month. Boys are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and church music, while girls work on reading, singing hymns, and needlework. Evening classes, mostly in Bible reading, are conducted for adults, either by the school teachers or by literate adults.

The teachers are paid by the Sierra Leone Company, but classes are held in private homes, shutters left open to let the soft breeze from the sea slip through and freshen the shadows. The air smells sweetly green and luxurious. The children can see the little triangular sails of the Bullom boats (lateen-rigged as the Portuguese explorers taught then three centuries earlier) drifting across the estuary. Hawks wheel lazily over the treetops above King Tom’s village. Flycatchers dart among the branches of the trees along the edge of the clearing; weaver birds mend their hanging nests; crickets sing raucously in the fringe of shade. Somewhere up the hill a faint string of ax blows echoes from a work party. Time seems to hang suspended in the shadow of the overhanging thatched roof during those hours of tutelage, permitting the children to forget the worries and dissatisfactions that haunt their parents.³⁵

The students sit on narrow wooden benches, reading the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, learning the pious lessons of their preacher instructors. These books are written in standard English; they hear the white officers speaking the standard English of the 1790s. The blacks themselves, however, including the preacher/teachers speak the black English learned on the colonial plantations of America. With no formal training, they were forced as slaves to learn enough English vocabulary to understand the instructions of their masters, but they fitted that vocabulary into the grammatical construction of the West African languages they had originally spoken. This was particularly evident in their idiosyncratic conjugation of English verbs, but actually follows a logical West African pattern³⁶—a pattern that survives in black English today.³⁷

* * *

Now to return to the event which kept Anna Maria’s pen idle for four months: On August 30 the Samuel and Jane arrived from England, bringing Alexander Falconbridge’s replacement, Mr. Wallace.³⁸ On September 6th, John Clarkson wrote in his journal:

I took an opportunity of communicating to Mr. Falconbridge in as delicate a way as I could the nature of the despatches received from the Court of Directors respecting him. He received the account of his dismissal with calmness as he generally does any thing I say whenever I feel it my duty to advise him. He says he will never return to England, which he may very safely say, for had he not had one of the best constitutions he must have died long since. He is wasting away daily and his habits will in the end destroy him; but he appears to have strength to contend with every attack [of malaria ?] and may last for some time to come.³⁹

Having been dismissed from company service, why didn’t Falconbridge ask for passage on the next ship back to England, at company expense, and then demanded severance pay from the company, with which he could have set himself up again in another surgery? Would it have been too humiliating? Or was his alcoholism too far advanced for him to plan a new beginning?

Endnotes:

1. Thomas Winterbottom, who arrived in mid-July 1792.

2. In November 1791, six men—Henry Hew Dalrymple, Lieutenant Philip Beaver, Sir William Halton, John King, John Young and Robert Dobbin—formed a committee at Old Slaughter’s Coffee-house for the colonization of Bulama. A Constitution for the settlement was drawn up in February 1792. The plan was to grow sugar and other tropical plantations. Dalrymple, an unemployed army officer who had served on the west coast of Africa at Gorée, was the prime mover behind the plan. Coleman, p. 162.

3. Lieutenant Philip Beaver (1766-1813) was the younger son of a Somerset clergyman. His career resembled John Clarkson’s, to whom he was well known. They had both entered the navy as fatherless young boys, served on the same ships and been retired on half pay in the 1780s. In 1805 Beaver published an account of the failed colony in his African Memoranda: relative to an attempt to establish a British settlement on the island of Bulama, on the western coast of Africa, in the year 1792 (London: C. & R. Baldwin, 1805). Coleman, pp. 162-3.

4. A third of those on the Calypso died of fever during the six weeks before she sailed to England. Coleman, p. 163.

5. In his first address to the colony after receiving his new instructions, Clarkson argued that "though I have it in my power to do as I please, . . . I detest an arbitrary government." Ingham, Sierra Leone, p. 97.

6. John Clarkson wrote on August 15: "Mr. DuBois having finished Harmony Hall, as well as some alterations in the stoehouse, reports to me to-day that he is ready to receive all the fish and cheese from the Duke of Savoy in a place calculated for such articles . . .." Sierra Leone Studies, Volume VIII, p. 10.

7. Clarkson wrote of this period: ‘We are now tormented with ants and . . . crickets, cockroaches, spiders, etc., are driven out of their crevices and jump about the floor in a distressing situation amongst their enemies.’ Ingham, Sierra Leone, p. 137.

8. Matthews, on pp. 43-44, wrote that "The tenneé, when full grown, is from fifteen to twenty feet long, and about three feet round . . .. The natives even assert that they are so large in the savannahs, in the interior country, they will swallow a buffalo."

9. Afzelius and Nordenskiold were both members of the Swedenborgian Church and were hoping to discover, somewhere in the heart of Africa, the pure African Church which Emanuel Swedenborg believed to be hidden there. See Fyfe, A History, pp. 42-3.

10. The botanist was Adam Afzelius, student of Linnaeus, who later taught at the University of Uppsala. He planned to write an ambitious natural history of Sierra Leone. The mineralist was Augustus Nordenskiold, a Swedenborgian alchemist and visionary who, together with C. B. Wadstrom, dreamed in the 1780s of a free Church in West Africa. Together (with others) they wrote the utopian document, Plan for a Free Community upon the Coast of Africa, under the Protection of Great Britain; but intirely independent of all european Laws and Governments (London: 1789). Coleman, p. 163.

11. Clarkson was later to estimate the money wasted during the first year "upwards of £40,000." (British Library, Add. MS 41263, Clarkson to Hartshorne, September 1793) Fyfe, Anna Maria Falconbridge, p. 90.

12. Clarkson’s story was different—that Falconbridge knew nothing about trade and had taken to drink instead. His health had broken down, and on 18th August, a week before she wrote this letter, Clarkson wrote in his journal, "Mr. Falconbridge talks of going in the Ocean to fetch stock from the Sherbro country, but it is all talk, he is ill and will never be better." Sierra Leone Studies, Volume VIII, p. 12.

13. Ibid., p. 2.

14. In the sense of ‘administration’.

15. Thornton wrote of Horne that he was "in some degree of connection with Mr Wesley, tho’ he is of the Church of England." A man of "extraordinary zeal," Thornton believed he would "be the delight of the Methodistical part of the Blacks." British Library, Clarkson Papers, MS Add. 41263, vol. 1. William Dawes (1762-1836) was an officer of marines, scientist and administrator, who had recently served in Port Jackson. He was to take over as Governor of Sierra Leone after Clarkson's departure in December 1792. Coleman, p. 163.

16. Sierra Leone Studies, Volume VIII, p. 26.

17. Ingraham, p. 129.

18. Clarkson journal, July 14, 1792.

19. Fyfe, Anna Maria Falconbridge, p. 97: The Fisher had arrived at the Isles de Los, north of Sierra Leone, at the end of June and was only able to sail in March 1793. Meanwhile fourteen of the 356 slaves purchased had died, and another nineteen died on the passage to Grenada (HLRO, L5/II/2).

20. Sierra Leone Studies, Vol. VIII, p. 63-65.

21. Sierra Leone Studies, Volume VIII, p. 74-84.

22. Fyfe, Anna Maria Falconbridge, p. 200: William Dawes had served for several years at Botany Bay, but was dismissed from the service by the governor because he objected to being made to take part in an attack on some aborigines. M. B. Eldershaw, Phillip of Australia, London, 1938, pp. 201-2, 314.

23. In the 1802 edition Falconbridge appended the following explanatory footnote: "Mr. Clarkson had wrote a day or two before this to Mrs. Wilson, offering her a passage in the Harpy, and at the same time informing Captain Wilson, she was to sail in a few days, if he wished to write."

24. Wilson, John Clarkson, p. 101.

25. Clarkson’s diary indicated that the Felicity arrived on the 21st, not on the 2nd.

26. Clarkson also commented on the absurdity of this in a country where it rained for almost half the year. Ingham, Sierra Leone, p. 145.

27. Nordenskiold died 10 December 1792, having returned gravely ill from a journey of several months, during which he was robbed by natives and persecuted by slave traders. Officially he was looking for gold, but the urgency with which he set out on his travels suggests he may also have been hoping to verify Swedenborg's vision about the New Church of Jerusalem in Africa's interior. Coleman, p. 164.

28. James Watt, plantation manager; at one point he was also in charge of the hospital at Savoy Point. By 1803 he had joined the slave trade. Coleman, p. 164. He remained in Sierra Leone until his death in 1795. Fyfe, Anna Maria Falconbridge, p. 103.

29. Clifford, From Slavery to Freetown, p. 184.

30. As this is not a theme she has hitherto mentioned in her letters, but will bring up subsequently, this paragraph may have been inserted later. Fyfe, Anna Maria Falconbridge, p. 104.

31. See Sierra Leone Studies, Volume VIII, p. 20.

32. Now Richard Pepys, who succeeded James Cocks as surveyor.

33. Clifford, p. 137.

34. Clifford, p. 145.

35. Clifford, p. 149.

36. In the West African languages, verb forms are constant in every tense. For example, if the third person of the present tense of the verb to be is he is, that the conjugation will be I is, you is, he/she is, we is, you is, they is.

37. Clifford, p. 149.

38. Sierra Leone Studies, Volume VIII, p. 25.

39. Ibid., p. 44.

Return to Introduction for Anna Maria's diary