"The English and French are now the only great nations with settlements of any consequence in Western Africa. The principal stations of the French are at Assinee, on the Gold Coast, and at Gaboon, on the river of the same name. In the north-west they have settlements on the Senegal River, where they have spent a great deal of money and wasted the lives of many Frenchmen without much advantage. Quite recently they have made an effort to establish a colony on the Livingstone, by supporting an Italian adventurer named De Brazza, who claims to have secured a grant of territory from a native chief. [Illustration: CAPE COAST CASTLE.] "The foreign settlements are chiefly for purposes of trade; and as they have been placed there in most instances against the will of the natives, and are liable at any time to be assaulted, they are generally protected by fortifications. One of the strongest of these is Cape Coast Castle. The English settled there more than two hundred years ago, and established themselves on a rocky point, where they were quite safe from the natives, and could make good resistance to a European foe. The Dutch had a fortress called Elmina only a short distance from Cape Coast Castle, and sometimes the garrisons were not on friendly terms, owing to the different policies pursued by the English and Dutch." "But you haven't said anything about Liberia," said Frank. "You know that in the United States we have heard a great deal about Liberia, which was settled by negroes liberated from slavery in our country and other parts of America." "I'm coming to that," replied Fred. "The first settlement of the kind was Sierra Leone, which was founded in 1787, with a colony of five hundred destitute negroes sent from London by some charitable people who wanted to help them along. A few years later one thousand liberated slaves from Nova Scotia were sent there, and in succeeding years there was an immigration of several thousand negroes from the West Indies. When the British cruisers began to capture slave-ships they took all the captives to Sierra Leone and set them free. That's the way the colony was peopled, and it now has about forty thousand inhabitants, of whom only a little more than a hundred are Europeans. It has schools, churches, a theological college, and other educational institutions, and the people are as intelligent as those of any European city." Frank asked what was the religion of the people of Sierra Leone. "There is a bishop of the Church of England," replied Fred, "and there are nearly a hundred ordained ministers, but they have not been very successful in converting the negroes. The most of the inhabitants are Moslems, and it has been found much easier to convert them to Mohammedanism than to Christianity.