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The liberateds, called by the people 'Cruits, and officially 'recaptives, soon became an important factor. In 1811 they numbered 2,500 out of 4,500; and between June 1819 and January 1833 they totalled 27,167 hands. They are now represented by about seventeen chief, and two hundred minor, tribes. A hundred languages, according to Mr.
Sybille Boyle, so named from a ship and from her captain, R.N., who served in the preventive squadron about 1824. He is an unofficial member of Council and a marked exception to the rule of the 'Liberateds. Everybody has a good word to say of him. The establishment is the regular colonial, where you can buy anything between a needle and a sheet-anchor.
Koelle, increased to a hundred and fifty by Bishop Vidal, and reduced to sixty by Mr. Griffith, are spoken in the streets of Freetown, a 'city' which in 1860 numbered 17,000 and now 22,000 souls. The inextricably mixed descendants of the liberateds may be a total of 35,430, more than half the sum of the original settlement, 53,862.
They have not improved in demeanour during the last twenty years. Even then the 'liberateds' and 'recaptives, chiefly Akus and Ibos, had begun the 'high jinks, which we shall find at their highest in Sierra Leone. They had organised 'Companies, the worst of trade-unions, elected headmen, indulged in strikes, and more than once had come into serious collision with the military.
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