of the Deys subjected the unhappy adventurers; in the mere act of obtaining water (for which purpose they had to pass through the enemy’s town) their obstacles were endless.  While the demolition of their unfinished houses, secretly accomplished by their persecutors, and similar injuries constantly practised, ultimately compelled them to discontinue their principal work.  At length the vigilant hatred of their savage enemies, resolved itself into a mode of attack which robbed the settlers of all present means of resistance.—­Watching their opportunity when the boats went up the river Montserado, in search of water, they sheltered themselves beneath the large trees and rocks which overhung the narrowest parts of the river, from whence they fired upon the boats at pleasure, alike without the possibility of receiving any injury, or of their victims avoiding the danger by a hasty retreat.  In this adventure, one colonist and an English seaman lost their lives, and two other persons were slightly wounded.

The recurrence of such events did not fail to keep up a spirit of animosity between the Dey tribe and the colonists, whose principal crime in the eyes of the natives, was their aversion to the slave trade; an aversion which struck at the root of all the interest, fears, and prejudices of the Deys.  Old King Peter, the venerable patriarch of the nation, and with whom the first treaty for the purchase of the ground had been negotiated, was capitally arraigned and brought to trial on a charge of betraying the interests of his subjects, by selling their country.  The accusation was substantiated, and it became doubtful whether the punishment of high treason, would not be executed upon a monarch, whom they had been accustomed to venerate and to obey for more than thirty years.

Under these circumstances the settlers became seriously alarmed respecting the nature of the intercourse which might become necessary to the policy of Bacaia, the king of the larger island, and from whom they had received many proofs of friendship, in secret supplies of fuel and water.  But as his plantations, with numerous detached bodies of his subjects, were entirety exposed to the power of the Deys, it seemed absolutely requisite that his friendship with that tribe should not be affected by any further acts of kindness to a people so inimical to their views.  Hence the suspicions of the colonists became naturally excited against Bacaia.  It appeared that the considerations which had been so painfully entertained on the part of the colonists, operated no less powerfully upon the mind of the chief; for he immediately summoned to his aid one of the most powerful and famous chiefs of the Condoes, by whose protection he had for many years been sustained in his dangerous contiguity to such quarrelsome neighbours.