The latter, resulting from an attack on Grebo Big
Town, proved a regular 'Bull's Run,' wherein the citizens lost all their
guns and ammunition, and where the Grebes slaughtered my true and trusty
steward, Selim Agha.
I must allow myself a few lines in memory of a typical man. Selim was a
Nubian of lamp-black skin; but his features were Semitic down to the
nose-bridge, and below it, like the hair, distinctly African: this mixture
characterises the negroid as opposed to the negro. In the first fourth of
the present century he was bought by Mr. Thurburn--_venerabile nomen_--of
Alexandria, and sent for education to North Britain. There he learned to
speak Scotch, to make turtle-soup, to stuff birds, to keep accounts, and
to be useful and valuable in a series of ways. Then his thoughts, full of
philanthropy, turned towards the 'old mother.' The murder of Dr. Barth's
companion, Vogel, in 1856, originated seven fruitless expeditions to
murderous Waday, and he made sundry journeys into the interior. I believe
that he took service for some time with Lieutenant (now Sir John H.)
Glover before he became my factotum between 1860 and 1865. When I left the
Coast he transferred himself to Liberia, where, he wrote, they proposed to
'run him for the presidency.
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