This is something of a gap, but
except for the sketchy description given us by Hanno of the place,
and his one gaudy night there, Sierra Leone until the fifteenth
century utterly disappears from the knowledge of man. Happy is the
country without a history!
Nineteen hundred years having now supposed to elapse, the second act
begins with De Cintra, who came in search of slaves, and instead
gave the place its name. Because of the roaring of the wind around
the peak that rises over the harbor he called it the Lion Mountain.
After the fifteenth century, in a succession of failures, five
different companies of "Royal Adventurers" were chartered to trade
with her people, and, when convenient, to kidnap them; pirates in
turn kidnapped the British governor, the French and Dutch were
always at war with the settlement, and native raids, epidemics, and
fevers were continuous. The history of Sierra Leone is the history
of every other colony along the West Coast, with the difference that
it became a colony by purchase, and was not, as were the others, a
trading station gradually converted into a colony. During the war in
America, Great Britain offered freedom to all slaves that would
fight for her, and, after the war, these freed slaves were conveyed
on ships of war to London, where they were soon destitute. They
appealed to the great friend of the slave in those days, Granville
Sharp, and he with others shipped them to Sierra Leone, to
establish, with the aid of some white emigrants, an independent
colony, which was to be a refuge and sanctuary for others like
themselves.
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