"Having thus become possessed of the goods at the lowest possible ready-money rate, then subsequent transactions are not closed with the expense of shop-rents, shopkeepers' and clerks' wages and subsistence, etc., etc., expenses unavoidable to Europeans. They are therefore enabled at once to undersell the European retail merchants, and to secure a handsome profit to themselves; a consummation the more easily attained, aided as it is by the extreme simplicity and abstemiousness of their mode of living, which contrast so favorably for them with the expensive and almost necessary luxuries of European life. Many of this grade possess huge canoes, with which they trade in the upper part of the river, along shore, and in the neighbouring rivers, bringing down rice, palm-oil, cam-wood, ivory, hides, etc., etc., in exchange for British manufactures. They are all in easy circumstances, readily obtaining mercantile credits from sixty pounds to two hundred pounds. Persons of this and the grade next to be mentioned evince great anxiety to become possessed of houses and lots in old Freetown. These lots are desirable because of their proximity to the market-place and the great thoroughfares, and also for the superior advantages which they allow for the establishment of their darling object,--'a retail store.' Property of this description has of late years become much enhanced in value, and its value is still increasing solely from the annually increasing numbers and prosperity of this and the next grade. The town-lots originally granted to the Nova-Scotian settlers and the Maroons are, year after year, being offered for sale by public auction, and in every case liberated Africans are the purchasers. A striking instance of their desire to possess property of this description, and of its increasing value, came under my immediate notice a few months ago.