Excerpt from A Transformed Colony: Sierra Leone as It Was, and as It Is Its Progress, Peoples, Native Customs and Undeveloped Wealth Tats book is, in the main, a record of my personal experiences, for a very large part of my life has been spent in the Colony of Sierra Leone. As Travelling Commissioner, I had to do pioneer work in opening up and in mapping out the far distant and then unknown parts of the Hinterland; and on behalf of the Government I made many treaties with the paramount chiefs.
For some years I was the only white man known in the Upper Mendi country, and am still, I believe, the only European official who has travelled round the entire area of what is now the Protectorate. Quite recently I have visited much of the ground I went over in earlier times, to find, in many cases, improvements that would have been inconceivable to me had I not witnessed them.
I am glad to be able to add to my own observations some accounts of the ethnological and official work of others, long since gone before, who, in those darker days, did so much to collect authentic information concerning the numerous tribes of the remoter regions through which they travelled.
From their work and my own, often carried through with extreme difficulty, it became very apparent that in the interests, of the people, and for the development of the country's bounti ful indigenous wealth, the Government must take definite steps towards pacifying the various tribes and establishing a new state of things in which, under British Protection, the people would be able to enjoy life and be free from that shocking terrorism which was the perpetual condition of their existence until the creation of the Protectorate in 1896.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
For some years I was the only white man known in the Upper Mendi country, and am still, I believe, the only European official who has travelled round the entire area of what is now the Protectorate. Quite recently I have visited much of the ground I went over in earlier times, to find, in many cases, improvements that would have been inconceivable to me had I not witnessed them.
I am glad to be able to add to my own observations some accounts of the ethnological and official work of others, long since gone before, who, in those darker days, did so much to collect authentic information concerning the numerous tribes of the remoter regions through which they travelled.
From their work and my own, often carried through with extreme difficulty, it became very apparent that in the interests, of the people, and for the development of the country's bounti ful indigenous wealth, the Government must take definite steps towards pacifying the various tribes and establishing a new state of things in which, under British Protection, the people would be able to enjoy life and be free from that shocking terrorism which was the perpetual condition of their existence until the creation of the Protectorate in 1896.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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