against the aggressors, put them to flight, and destroyed their towns; King Peter and Joe Harris agreed to forever abandon the slave trade, to give free passage from the interior through their country, to rebuild the settlement, and return the property; a better spot was selected and a new settlement made. When Mechlin returned to the United States, Rev. John B. Pinney, who was already in Liberia as a missionary, succeeded him. He found everything in a state of confusion and dilapidation; himself a man of vigor, he acted promptly and made notable improvements; he attempted to give agriculture its proper position as the fundamental interest of the community; he purchased fertile lands in the interior for cultivation; he emphasized the claims of Liberia to lands lying behind Cape Mount; he adjusted difficulties between the Congoes and Eboes, recaptured Africans; had he remained long in office, he might perhaps have accomplished much. He, however, left Liberia at the end of 1834 for home. Dr. Ezekiel Skinner took his position; at the time of Pinney’s retirement he was the colonial physician. His labors were arduous and multiform; in performing them he suffered repeated exposures which brought on a serious fever under which he was reduced so low that he was obliged to return to the United States, leaving Anthony D. Williams as agent in his place. Williams, in fact, seems to have been agent at intervals from the time of Randall’s death until he gave way to Thomas Buchanan in 1839. Inasmuch as most authorities speak of him as if he were a white man, it may be well to raise the question. Late in November, 1836, Rev. Charles Rockwell, chaplain of the United States Navy, was in Liberia. In his _Sketches of Foreign Travel_ he says: “Mr. Williams, who has for years been the acting-governor of Monrovia, took the lead in entertaining us and in doing the honors of the place. He was from Petersburg, Va., where, if I mistake not, he was once a slave. He has a peculiarly modest, sedate, gentlemanly deportment, and during his repeated visits to the United States has, by his intelligent and good sense, justly secured the esteem and confidence of those with whom he had intercourse. He came to Africa as a clergyman of the Methodist Church, and for a year or more was engaged in the self-denying work of a missionary among the natives at a distance of 150 miles in the interior. Under the title of vice-agent, he has for years been head (actively) of the colony, and as far as I could learn, has so discharged the duties of his office as to secure the confidence alike of his fellow citizens and of the society from which he received his appointment.” When, in 1839, he gave up the agency to Thomas Buchanan as Governor of the newly established Commonwealth of Liberia, the Board of the Colonization Society expressed itself as well satisfied with his long services; but it was their opinion “that the time had not yet arrived when the interests of the