“I consider the colony of Maryland in Liberia, known as the one receiving the exclusive patronage of the Maryland State Colonization Society of the United States, as decidedly one of the most prosperous of the American settlements on the western coast of Africa. It could not have been otherwise. The organization and continued energetic labors of the board representing the society, would lead us to expect nothing less. Soon after the colony was founded by Dr. James Hall, now the society’s general agent in Baltimore, and the machinery of a colonial government set in motion, the selection of a colored man as governor was made. This was just as it should be. It was called an experiment, but it was one of the success of which no reasonable fears could be entertained. From the commencement, the colony has been progressing, if not rapidly, yet steadily and onwardly. The population is now about seven hundred, and they receive an immigration every year. All necessary preparation is made for the reception of an expedition before its arrival. There is a public asylum or receptacle, consisting of a number of separate rooms, and situated in a healthful part of the colony, into which the new-comers are generally acclimated. Meantime frame buildings are being erected on lots laid out for them, of suitable size to afford them a good garden spot, and by the time the immigrant is through the fever and can begin to take care of himself, he has a home to go into--a dry, comfortable little framed and shingled house, where he can have all the necessaries and comforts of life, if he will only follow up his first advantages with economy and industry. “It is a notorious fact _that there is not a single family, of all the colonists in Maryland in Liberia, occupying a thatched house_; all have buildings such as I have described. Let it be understood that there is another point of sound and wise policy in this arrangement of incalculable advantage to the settler. His house is not _given_ to him; by no means. He would not value it as much if it were. He is charged with all the expenses of its erection. When he is able, he is furnished with work, work is found him by some means, and as he earns his wages, he receives a part to live on, and a reasonable proportion is stopped in the hands of the society’s agent to pay the debt due for the house. As I am not writing a treatise on colonization, reader, I can not stop here to notice one tithe of the many points of superiority which this plan possesses over others which have been in vogue in other places. But that it works well, one must go to Palmas, visit the people as I did, go to their homes, eat and drink with them, inquire into their condition, find out their contentedness, without seeming to intend any such thing, and then he will be satisfied.”