History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol 1: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as CitizensWilliams, George Washington
History
History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol 1: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens
Williams, George Washington
African Americans -- History; Liberia; Sierra Leone
"1. Those most recently arrived are to be found occupying
mud houses and small patches of ground in the neighborhood
of one or other of the villages (the villages are about
twenty in number, placed in different parts of the colony,
grouped in three classes or districts; names, mountain,
river, and sea districts.) The majority remain in their
locations as agriculturists; but several go to reside in the
neighborhood of Freetown, looking out for work as laborers,
farm-servants, servant to carry wood and water, grooms,
house-servants, etc.; others cultivate vegetables, rear
poultry and pigs, and supply eggs, for the Sierra Leone
market. Great numbers are found offering for sale in the
public market and elsewhere a vast quantity of cooked edible
substances--rice, corn and cassava cakes; heterogeneous
compounds of rice and corn-flower, yams, cassava, palm-oil,
pepper, pieces of beef, mucilaginous vegetables, etc.,
etc., under names quite unintelligible to a stranger, such
as _aagedee_, _aballa_, _akalaray_, _cabona_, etc., etc.,
cries which are shouted along the streets of Freetown from
morn till night. These, the lowest grade of liberated
Africans, are a harmless and well-disposed people; there is
no poverty among them, nor begging; their habits are frugal
and industrious; their anxiety to possess money is
remarkable: but their energies are allowed to run riot and
be wasted from the want of knowledge requisite to direct
them in proper channels.
"2. Persons of grade higher than those last described are to
be found occupying frame houses: they drive a petty trade in
the market, where they expose for sale nails, fish-hooks,
door-hinges, tape, thread, ribbons, needles, pins, etc. Many
of this grade also look out for the arrival of canoes from
the country laden with oranges, _kolas_, sheep, bullocks,
fowls, rice, etc., purchase the whole cargo at once at the
water-side, and derive considerable profit from selling such
articles by retail in the market and over the town. Many of
this grade are also occupied in curing and drying fish, an
article which always sells well in the market, and is in
great request by people at a distance from the water-side,
and in the interior of the country. A vast number of this
grade are tailors, straw-hat makers, shoemakers, cobblers,
blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, etc. Respectable men of
this grade meet with ready mercantile credits amounting from
twenty pounds to sixty pounds; and the class is very
numerous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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