Consequently
business had been at a standstill for six weeks. We were disappointed in
our hopes of being accompanied by the Honourable Professor E. W. Blyden,
ex-minister to England and afterwards principal of the college. He had
travelled with Winwood Reade, and I looked forward to hearing the opinions
of an African Arabic scholar touching the progress and future of El-Islam
in the Dark Continent. That it advances with giant steps may be proved by
these figures. Between 1861 and 1862 I found at most a dozen Moslems at
Lagos; in 1865 the number had risen to 1,200, and in 1880, according to my
old friend M. Colonna, Agent Consulaire de France, it passes 10,000,
requiring twenty-seven mosques.
The latest charts of Liberia show no less than twenty-six parallelograms
stretching inland, at various angles with the shore, and stated to have
been acquired by 'conquest or purchase' between 1822 and 1827; but the
natives, especially the Krumen, complain that after allowing the
foreigners to dwell, amongst them they have been despoiled of their
possessions, and that, once lords of the soil, they have sunk to mere
serfs. Hence the frequent wars and chronic bad blood.
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