"But Liberia is a perfectly good republic," protested Everett. "The
blacks there may not be as far advanced as in your colonies, but they're
not cannibals."
"Monrovia is a very small part of Liberia," said the trader dryly. "And
none of these protectorates, or crown colonies, on this coast pretends
to control much of the Hinterland. There is Sierra Leone, for instance,
about the oldest of them. Last year the governor celebrated the
hundredth anniversary of the year the British abolished slavery. They
had parades and tea-fights, and all the blacks were in the street in
straw hats with cricket ribbons, thanking God they were not as other men
are, not slaves like their grandfathers. Well, just at the height of the
jubilation, the tribes within twenty miles of the town sent in to say
that they, also, were holding a palaver, and it was to mark the fact
that they _never_ had been slaves and never would be, and, if the
governor doubted it, to send out his fighting men and they'd prove it.
It cast quite a gloom over the celebration."
"Do you mean that only twenty miles from the coast--" began Everett.
"_Ten_ miles," said the Coaster.
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