Steaming along the picturesque face of the Sierra Leone peninsula, the
stranger remarks with surprise that its most fertile ridges and slopes
hardly show a field, much less a farm, and that agriculture is confined to
raising a little garden-stuff for the town-market. The peasant, the hand,
is at a discount. The Sierra Leonite is a peddler-born who aspires to be a
trader, a merchant; or he looks to a learned profession, especially the
law. The term 'gentleman-farmer' has no meaning for him. Of late years a
forcing process has been tried, and a few plantations have been laid out,
chiefly for the purpose, it would appear, of boasting and of vaunting the
new-grown industry at home. Mr. Henry M. Stanley remarks [Footnote:
_Coomassie and Magdala_, p. 8], 'In almost every street in Sierra Leone I
heard the voice of praise and local prayer from the numerous aspirants to
clerkships and civil service employ; but I am compelled to deny that I
ever heard the sound of mallet and chisel, of mortar, pestle, and trowel,
the ringing sound of hammer on anvil, or roar of forge, which, to my
practical mind, would have had a far sweeter sound. There is virgin land
in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone yet untilled; there are buildings in
the town yet unfinished; there are roads for commerce yet to be made; the
trade of the African interior yet waits to be admitted into the capacious
harbour of Sierra Leone for the enrichment of the fond nursing-mother of
races who sits dreamily teaching her children how to cackle instead of how
to work.
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