In 1873 it became my duty and my pleasure to visit the Coast of Africa, after an interval of twenty-five years. A quarter of a century had passed leaving its furrows upon my face, as it does upon the face of every son of Adam, but the interest I had felt in that lone lorn colony was as fresh as ever. It was therefore with unmixed satisfaction that I landed again at Cape Mesurado, and in an instant recalled the familiar streets and many of the faces that used to greet me in Monrovia years ago. I do not propose to go into the history of Liberia; that is to be found in every Cyclopedia—those who run may read it. My own personal impressions will be of more interest to you; these have vitality which comes of contact, a freshness not to be found in the musty pages of a book however well written. Personal experience compared with history is the original compared with the photograph. Cape Mesurado juts out into the sea, a promontory of gentle height, covered with the verdure which the tropics only can produce. The surf roars at its base and the water of the Mesurado river breaks over the bar by its side—the canoe of the native glides through the surf over this bar and lands you with wonderful safety at Monrovia, which lies just behind the cape by the side of the river. In the growth of a new nation, in its consolidation and crystalization, _time_ forms no just measure of _progress_. Not to go back, to stem the adverse tide, to wait, is absolutely to advance. To be where you were, after years of struggles against obstacles almost insurmountable, is a point gained, and a success accomplished. Monrovia presented the same sunny streets and shaded houses, the same evidences of comfort, and of the absence of want, that it did twenty-five years before; no great mark of improvement, no sad evidences of decay. In the meanwhile, however, more activity on the wharves, more canoes laden with produce coming down the river, steamships stopping eight times a month landing and receiving cargo, more sugar mills, coffee trees growing where the forest undisturbed had waved before—all this, and more, indicated life, business, commercial and agricultural prosperity. I thought to myself as I walked again through the streets, “Monrovia is a _fixed fact_.” No reflux tide can wash her into the sea. She may advance more rapidly, she may stand still. But every event, whether rapid, slow, or stationary in her course, Liberia is there to _stay_. An island in the ocean of barbarism, “a little cloud out of the sea like a man’s hand,” yet full of portent to Africa, a herald of the coming of that army of civilization which by an inexorable law exterminates where it cannot convert.