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Updated: May 11, 2025
In his native state he does not want to get heavy surf-boats into the sea; his own light dug-out is easily slid down, he does not want to cut down heavy timber trees, and get them into the river, and so on; but this state is now getting disturbed by the influx of white enterprise, and not only disturbed, but destroyed, and so he must alter his ways or there will be grave trouble; but it is encouraging to remark that the African is almost as teachable and as willing to learn handicrafts as he is to assimilate other things, provided his mind has not been poisoned by fallacious ideas, and the results already obtained from the Krumen and the Accras are good.
It was just six bells in the afternoon watch when two boats one containing fresh water in casks, and the other loaded to her gunwale with fresh meat mostly goat-mutton strongly impregnated with the powerful musky odour of the animal appeared paddling leisurely off to the Barracouta under the guidance of four powerful but phenomenally lazy Krumen, who would probably have consumed the best part of half-an-hour in the short passage from the wharf to the brig had not our impatient first luff dispatched a boat to tow them alongside.
She was manned by four Krumen, and in the stern-sheets sat a tall, swarthy man, whose white drill suit and white, broad-brimmed Panama hat, swathed with a white puggaree, caused his suntanned face and hands to appear almost as black as the skins of his negro crew.
Krumen, who will never, I think, make good mine-workmen, are constantly employed in washing the blankets as soon as they are charged; and the resulting black sand is carried to the washing-house to be panned, or rather calabashed, by native women. In time we shall doubtless see concentrating bundles and amalgamating barrels.
Mechanics' wages range between 1l. 5s. and 4l. All have rations or 'subsistence, which here means 3d. a day. Mr. MacLennan has a few Fanti miners, whom he pays at the rate of 6d. per half-day. His full muster of Krumen is 120; the headmen receive 27s. 6d., rising, after six months, to 35s.
William Walker, of the Gaboon Mission, who kindly wrote that I should have something less cranky if I could wait awhile; he manned it with three of his own Krumen, and he collected the necessary stores and supplies of cloth, pipes and tobacco, rum, white wine, and absinthe for the natives. My private stores cost some 200 francs.
Much injury was done to the settlement by the so-called 'Grebo war. These wild owners of Cape Palmas are confounded by Europeans with the true Krumen, their distant cousins. The tribal name is popularly derived from gré, or gri, the jumping monkey, and it alludes to a late immigration.
The goods for the expedition brought out by the "Pearl" having been landed on a grassy island about forty miles from the bar, that vessel sailed for Ceylon, while the little "Ma-Robert" was left to pursue her course alone. Her crew consisted of about a dozen Krumen and a few Europeans.
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