PERRY LOCATES THE SITE OF MONROVIA.
ON the 5th of July 1821, Perry was doubly happy, in his first sole
command of a man-of-war, and in her being bound upon a worthy mission.
The _Shark_ was to convey Dr. Eli Ayres to Africa as agent of the United
States in Liberia. He was especially glad that he could now enforce his
ideas of ship hygiene. His ambition was to make the cruise without one
case of fever or scurvy.
The _Shark_ sped directly through the Canaries. Here, the human falcons
resorted before swooping on their human prey. At Cape de Verde, he found
the villianous slave-trade carried on under the mask of religion.
Thousands of negroes decoyed or kidnapped from Africa, were lodged at
the trading station for one year, and then baptized by the wholesale in
the established Roman faith. They were then shipped to Brazil as
Portuguese “subjects.” It was first aspersion, and then dispersion.
At Sierra Leone, Dr. Ayers was landed. Three out of every four whites in
the colony died with promptness and regularity. The British cruisers
suffered frightfully in the loss of officers, and the _Thistle_, spoken
October 21st, had only the commander and surgeon left of her staff.
Perry performed one act during this cruise which powerfully effected for
good the future of the American negro in Africa, and the destiny of the
future republic of Liberia. The first site chosen for the settlement of
the blacks sent out by the American Colonization Society was Sherbro
Island situated in the wide estuary of the Sherbro river which now
divides Sierra Leone from Liberia. In this low lying malarious district,
white men were sure to die speedily, and the blacks must go through the
fever in order to live. On Perry’s arrival, he found that the missionary
teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Winn, and the Reverend Mr. Andrews were already
in the cemetery from fever. Some of the new colonists were sick and six
of them had died.
Perry saw at once that the foundations of the settlement must be made on
higher ground. He selected, therefore, the promontory of Mont Serrado,
called Cape Mesurado. This place, easily accessible, had no superior on
the coast. It lay at the mouth of the Mesurado river which flowed from a
source three hundred miles in the interior.[4]
Having no authority to make any changes, the matter rested until
December 12, 1832 when Captain Stockton, Doctor Ayres, and seven
immigrants visited the location chosen by Matthew Perry. “That is the
spot that we ought to have,” said Captain Stockton, “that should be the
site of our colony. No finer spot on the coast.” Three days later a
contract to cede the desired land to the United States was signed by six
native “Kings.” Seventeen of the dusky sovereigns and thirty-four
dignitaries enjoying semi-royal honors, had assented, and on the
twenty-fifth of April 1832 the American flag was hoisted over Cape
Mesurado. Shortly afterwards, Monrovia, the future capital, named after
President Monroe, began its existence. To this form of the Monroe
doctrine, European nations have fully acceded. Liberia is the only
colony founded by the United States.
The _Shark_ ran, like a ferret in rat-holes, into all the rivers, nooks
and harbors, but though French, Dutch and Spanish vessels were chased
and overhauled, no American ships were caught. Perry wrote “The severe
laws of Congress had the desired effect of preventing American citizens
from employing their time and capital in this iniquitous traffic.” Yet
this species of commerce was very actively pursued by vessels wearing
the French, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch flags. The French and
Portuguese were the most persistent man-stealers. So great was the
demand for slaves, that villages only a few miles apart were in constant
war so as to get prisoners to be disposed of to the captains of
slave-vessels. Perry wrote:
“In this predatory warfare the most flagitious acts of cruelty are
committed. The ties of nature are entirely cut asunder for it is not
infrequent that parents dispose of their own children.”
The cargoes which the slavers carried to use in barter for human flesh
consisted of New England rum, Virginia tobacco, with European gunpowder,
paint, muskets, caps, hats, umbrellas and hardware. Most of the wearing
apparel was the unsalable or damaged stock of European shops. The Guinea
coast was the Elysium of old clothes men and makers of slop work. Long
out of fashion at home, these garments sufficed to deck gorgeously the
naked body of a black slave-peddler, while the rum corroded his interior
organs. The _Caroline_, a French ship overhauled by Perry, had made ten
voyages to Africa. The vessel, cargo and outfit cost $8,000, the value
of the cargo of one hundred and fifty-three slaves at $250 each, was
$38,250, a profit of nearly $30,000 for a single voyage. The sixty men,
ten women, and sixty-three children stowed in the hold were each fed
daily with one bottle of water and one pound of rice. The ships found
off Old Calabar and Cape Mount—now seats of active Christian and
civilizing labors—having no one on board who could speak English, were
completely fitted for carrying slaves. Those sailing below the equator,
and under their national flags, could not be molested. No Congress of
nations had yet outlawed slave-trading on all the seas as piracy. The
commander of the British squadron reported: “No Americans are engaged in
the [slave] trade. They would have no inducement to conceal their real
character from the officers of a British cruiser, for these have no
authority to molest them. All slaves are now under foreign flags.”
In this villainous work, the Portuguese from first to last have held
undisputed pre-eminence. Perry, after his three African cruises, was
confirmed in his opinion formed at first, and which all students of
Africa so unanimously hold. Mr. Robert Grant Watson, who has minutely
studied the national disgrace in many parts of the world thus formulates
this judgment.
“There seems indeed something peculiarly ingrained in the Portuguese
race, which makes them take to slave-dealing and slave-hunting, as
naturally as greyhounds take to chasing hares; and this observation
applies not to one section of the race alone, but to Portuguese wherever
they are to be found beyond the reach of European law. No modern race
can be as slave-hunters within measurable distance of the Portuguese.
Their exploits in this respect are written in the annals not only of the
whole coast of Brazil, from Para, Uruguay, and along the Missiones of
Paraguay, not only on the coast of Angola but throughout the interior of
Africa. You may take up the journals of one traveller after another, of
Burton, Livingstone, of Stanley, or of Cameron, and in what ever
respects their accounts and opinions may differ, one point they are one
and all entirely agreed on, namely, as to the pestilent and remorseless
activity of the ubiquitous Portuguese slave-catcher.”
“Having examined the northern part of the coast from the Bessagoes
shoals to Cape Mount,” writes Perry. “I took my departure for West
Indies following the track of Homeward Bound Guinea-men.”
A run across the Atlantic brought the _Shark_ to the West Indies. There
diligent search was begun for Picaroons or pirates. American merchant
vessels were convoyed beyond the coast of Cuba. The run northward
brought the _Shark_ to New York, January 17, 1822. In the violent change
from the equator to our rugged climate, many of the _Shark’s_ crew
suffered from frost-bites.
A short but very active cruise in African waters had been finished.
Despite the long calms, occasional tempests and the deadly land miasma,
not a single man had died on the _Shark_. This unusual exemption from
the disease was imputed by Perry under Providence, to the many
precautions observed by him and to the skilful attentions of Dr. Wiley.
Matthew Perry was among the first to discover the underlying cause of
the sailor’s malady—sea-scurvy. He believed it to be primarily due to
mal-nutrition. He found the soil in which the disease grew was a compost
of bad water, alcoholism, exposure, too exclusively salt diet, lack of
vegetables, of ventilation, and of cleanliness on ship. The canning
epoch inaugurated later by Americans, who, it is said, got their notions
from air-tight fruit jars dug up from Pompeii, had not yet dawned, but
Perry already put faith in succulents and the entire class of
crucifiers, seeing in them the cross of health in his crusade against
the scorbutic taint. Though not yet familiar with the marvelous power of
the onion, and the juice of limes, he endeavored at all times to secure
supplies of sauer-kraut, cabbages, radishes, and fruits rich in acids
and sub-acids. He was emulous of the success of captains Cook and Parry
who had succeeded so well in their voyages. He knew that in war, more
men perished by disease than in battle. He lived to see the day when a
ship was made a more healthy dwelling place than the average house, and
when, through perfected dietic knowledge, and the skill of the preserver
and hermetic sealer, sea-scurvy became so rare that a naval surgeon
might pass a lifetime without meeting a case save in a hospital.
-----
[4] See the Maryland Colonization Journal, vol. 2, p. 328 and the
December number of the Liberia _Herald_ 1845, for Perry’s Journal when
Lieutenant of the _Cyane_.