In 1906 domestic slavery was extinguished by an ordinance, the slave trade having been extirpated by joint British and French occupation of the trade routes a few years previously. The words “Sierra Leone” are a kind of compromise between Spanish and Portuguese due to the dull hearing and careless spelling of foreign names so characteristic of the English until the present generation. Projecting into the sea on this part of the coast (a coast otherwise flat and swampy) is a mountainous peninsula with bold hills facing the sea front. If these mountains are not sufficiently high[111] to be the “Theion Oχema” of the Greek translators of Hanno’s journal, they were at any rate sufficiently striking to make an impression on the early Portuguese explorers, who dubbed them “Serra Leoa” or the “Lion-like Mountain Range” because the reverberating thunder from the frequent storms booms and echoes between these forested peaks and valleys exactly like the roar of many lions. (The Spanish form would be Sierra Leona, and it was apparently the Spanish name that the English navigators adopted.) The British first frequented this coast in 1562 when (Sir) John Hawkins came to the Sierra Leone (Rokel) river to get slaves. From that time onwards British ships called at Sierra Leone whenever they could elude the warships of the angry Portuguese. A British trading station was established here in the latter part of the 17th century and did not wholly disappear (though usually tenanted as the slave depôt of some English-speaking mulatto) till it was merged in the definite occupation of 1787. Towards the end of the 18th century the fine harbour—the best harbour on the West coast of Africa—attracted the attention of Dr Henry Smeathman; and inspired by his writings the British Government obtained the cession of the Sierra Leone peninsula in 1788. Four years later a charter was granted and the territory was transferred to a philanthropic association known as the “St George’s Bay Company,” which decided to establish in that part of West Africa a settlement for freed negro slaves from the West Indies and Canada.