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Presently the lighthouse, four to five miles distant from the anchorage, was seen nestling at the base of old Cabo Ledo, the 'Glad Head, the Timni 'Miyinga, now Cape 'Sa Leone. Round this western point the sea and the discharge of two rivers run like a mill-race. Mr. Hanno describes an eruption, not a bush-fire, and Sa Leone never had a volcano within historic times.
At Sa Leone men are punished for not wearing overalls, and thus the 'city' becomes a rag-fair. The Timni men are dark negroids with the slightest infusion of Semitic blood; some had coated their eyebrows and part of their faces with chalk for ophthalmia. They appeared to be merry fellows enough; and they are certainly the only men in the colony who ever pretend to work.
Eighty-four perished on the journey, and not a few fell victims to the African climate and its intemperance; but some 400 survived and built for themselves Granville Town. These settlers formed the first colony. In 1790 the place was attacked by the Timni tribe, to avenge the insult offered to their 'King Jimmy' by the crew of an English vessel, who burnt his town.
George's Bay Company, paid 30l. to the Timni chief, Naimbana, alias King Tom, for the rocky peninsula, extending twenty square miles from the Rokel to the Ketu River. In the same year he took out the first batch of emigrants, 460 black freed-men and about 60 whites, in the ship Nautilus, whose history so far resembled that of the Mayflower.
The Governor, who attempted to parley, was wounded; but the colonists, seeing that life was at stake, armed themselves and beat off the assailants, when the Maroons of Granville Town completed the rout. After this warning a wall with strong watch-towers was built round Freetown. Notwithstanding all precautions, another 'Timni rising' took place in 1803.
The Governor was loth to believe that King Tom would thus injure his own interests, until one morning, when forty war-canoes, carrying armed Timnis, were descried paddling round the eastern point. Londoners and Nova Scotians fled to the fort, and next day the Timni drum sounded the attack.
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