At Cape Palmas we engaged thirty so-called Krumen: only seven were ready to accompany us, and the rest came nearly two months behind time. This is the farming season, and the people do not like to leave their field-lands. Jack Davis, headman, chief, crimp and 'promising' party, had been warned to be ready by Mr. R. B. N. Walker, whose name and certificate he wore upon a big silver crescent; but as _Senegal_ appeared on Sunday instead of Saturday, he gravely declared that his batch had retired to their plantations--in black-man's English, 'small countries.' We were compelled to make an advance, a measure unknown of old, and to pay more than double hire for working on the Gold Coast. These races, Kruboys, Grebos, and their cognates, have not improved during the last score of years. Their headmen were old hands approaching the fifties: now they are youths of twenty-five. The younger sort willingly engaged for three years; now they begin to notch their tallies for every new moon, and they wax home-sick after the tenth month. Once they were content to carry home a seaman's chest well filled with 'chow-chow' and stolen goods; in these days they must have ready money to deal with the Bristol barques. Having before described the 'Krao' and the Kru republic, with its four recognised castes, I need not repeat myself. [Footnote: _Wanderings_, &c., vol. ii. chap. vi., which ends with a short specimen of the language.] We again admired the magnificent development of muscle, which stood out in bunches as on the Farnese Hercules, set off by the most appropriate dress, a coloured oblong of loin-cloth, tucked in at the waist. We marvelled too at the contrast of Grecian figure and cynocephalous features, whose frizzly thatch, often cut into garden-plots, is unnecessarily protected by a gaudy greasy cap. In morals too these men are as peculiar as they are contradictory. They work, and work well: many old Coasters prefer them to all other tribes. They are at their best in boats or on board ship, especially ships of war, where they are disciplined. For carrying burdens, or working in the bush, they are by no means so valuable and yet, as will be seen, they are highly thought of by some miners in the Gold Mines. In the house they are at their worst; and they are a nuisance to camp, noisy and unclean. Their chief faults are lying and thieving; they are also apt to desert, to grow discontented, to presume, and ever to ask for more. These qualities are admirably developed in our headman, Toby Johnson, and his gang. I should not travel again with Krumen on the Gold Coast.