William Coppinger

“ Often, during these twenty years, I have been surprised at the apparent indifference of American capitalists and ship owners to the share that they might have obtained in the profits of the African trade, other than slaves. ”

“ Beverly P. Yates, who has resided in this Republic fifty-two years, remarked to me that he would prefer Liberia to America, even if he were made President of the United States. I have two brothers and their families, with numerous friends residing at Brewerville, and they are prospering finely. The conviction is strengthened by all I see that persons who improve the advantages afforded immigrants here could not be induced to exchange countries.” The Society looks hopefully for that increase in gifts which the broadening work imperatively demands. ”

“ The latter says: “What is being so successfully accomplished by England in India, by the United States in North America, and by Russia in Central Asia, that should we try to do in emulation of their example—seek a continent whereon to extend our beneficent influence, and find, by the employment of our [2] idle capital, at once a new market for the products of our industries and manufactures, and a vast centre of agricultural production, able to supply us, at small cost, with the raw materials not indigenous to our soil, which we now only obtain with difficulty from foreign sources.” ”

“ The Niger mission of the Church Missionary Society is manned wholly by native Africans, among whom the deaths in twenty-three years have been but eight, and that in a section which is mostly swampy and under water several months in the year. The Negro is the man of God’s right hand in Africa. ”

“ The jealousy of the United States has deterred the nations of the Eastern hemisphere from attempts, like that of Maximilian in Mexico, to found claims upon territories in either North or South America. Africa remains, and is at their doors. ”

“ Africans are continually going to and fro between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. I have met in Liberia and in its eastern frontiers, Mohammedan Negroes born in Mecca, the holy city of Arabia, who thought they were telling of nothing extraordinary when they were detailing the incidents of their journey, and of the journey of their friends, from the banks of the Niger—from the neighborhood of Sierra Leone and Liberia—across the continent to Egypt, Arabia and Jerusalem. ”

“ If it is the desire of Christians to abolish polygamy, to put a stop to domestic slavery, to encompass and vivify the people by civilizing influences, to elevate their thought, ennoble their action, and regenerate the continent, these things must be done by planting colonies of Christian and civilized Negroes along that coast and in the interior. ”

“ Commerce, capital, science, philanthropy, and religion have joined hands to penetrate the mysterious land and cast light on its gloomiest portions. Africa is very nearly everywhere regarded as the continent of the future.
Governmental.—France seems about to absorb Tunis and Tripoli, and to unite Algeria to her Senegal possessions. The Chambers have voted eight millions of francs ($1,600,000) for two railroads: (1) from Algiers to Timbuctoo, across the Sahara, and (2) from Saint Louis, Senegal, to Bamaka and Sego. ”

“ The continental powers of Europe, perceiving the immense advantage possessed by England in having her Indian Empire and her colonies as outlets for her manufactures and excess of population, are seeking to imitate her example by founding claims to such territories yet unoccupied by Europeans as are unable to protect themselves from aggression backed by Krupp guns. ”

“ Explorers within recent years have traversed the continent in every direction, and have brought back reports generally favorable. The Sahara is shown to be by no means the barren waste it has been represented, and the Soudan has had its vast capabilities exploited. Behind the explorer comes the military post and European civilization. ”

“ West Coast, along the Senegal and Gambia rivers, eastwardly into the Soudan, until she now possesses a large area of country, and exerts a predominant influence over a territory comparable, it is said, in extent with that of England in India. It is to consolidate and strengthen her acquisitions that she proposes to add Tunis to Algeria, and it would be doing scant justice to her policy to suppose that the seizure of Tunis is a detached and insignificant incident. ”

“ The newly appointed Governor of Sierra Leone, Arthur Elibank Havelock, Esq., was one of the representatives of the British Government at the conference.
Portugal is actively caring for her extensive African domain. The Governor-General of Angola has been directed to organize a system of colonization in that province, by selecting a region best adapted for its salubrity, fertility of soil, abundance of water, and facility of communication, and to prepare accommodations for one hundred colonists and their families, an emigration having begun from Madeira. ”

“ Climate.—Africa continues to be guarded by her malarious seaboard and poisonous fevers, and alien travelers, explorers, miners and missionaries still there find early graves. Statistics show the difference in the effects of the climate upon the white, the mulatto and the black man. ”

“ Having an area of 9,858,000 square miles, and an estimated population, mostly barbarous, of about 201,787,000 souls, it offers, despite its unfavorable climate, great advantages to the European people who shall first appropriate its fertile interior, its trade in mineral and agricultural products, and open these up to European commerce by means of lines of steamboat and railway communications. ”

“ The population of Liberia, including Medina, may be 1,400,000. The largest proportion of the natives are Mohammedans, perhaps 1,000,000. There are 26 Baptist churches, reporting 24 ministers and 1,928 communicants. The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States reports one bishop and 31 others, missionaries, teachers and assistants, 361 communicants, 597 Sunday-school scholars and 415 in day and boarding-schools. ”

“ A gentleman has given the £4,000 ($20,000) necessary to procure a steel boat to be named the “Plymouth,” to be used upon the Congo. The Livingstone Inland Mission (undenominational, begun in 1878,) has founded five stations and passed some two hundred of the three hundred miles to overcome the cataracts, where the river stretches out in navigable waters for about one thousand miles. Here it is intended to locate an industrial mission station, and to make the work ultimately self-supporting and self-extending. ”

“ William Coppinger, Secretary of the American Colonization Society, upon Africa, its condition from various points of view, its trade, mines, agricultural products and increased closeness of relation with the civilized world, which cannot fail to prove of interest to all persons concerned in the future of the mysterious “dark continent.” Americans can hardly conceive the importance attached by Europeans at present to the matters with which Mr. ”