those breathings of the earth-soul, with which the warm night of Africa rises into life,—­and then you will realize one of those moments of poetry which reward poor travellers for long days and nights of naked solitude."[101]

In 1772 Lord Mansfield delivered his celebrated opinion on the case of the Negro man Sommersett, whose master, having abandoned him in a sick condition, afterwards sought to reclaim him.  The decision was to the effect that no man, white or black, could set foot on British soil and remain a slave.  The case was brought at the instance of Mr. Granville Sharp.  The decision created universal comment.  Many Negroes in New England, who had found shelter under the British flag on account of the proclamation of Sir Henry Clinton, went to England.  Free Negroes from other parts—­Jamaica, St. Thomas, and San Domingo—­hastened to breathe the free air of the British metropolis.  Many came to want, and wandered about the streets of London, strangers in a strange land.  Granville Sharp, a man of great humanity, was deeply affected by the sad condition of these people.  He consulted with Dr. Smeathman, who had spent considerable time in Africa; and they conceived the plan of transporting them to the west coast of Africa, to form a colony.[102] The matter was agitated in London by the friends of the blacks, and finally the government began to be interested.  A district of about twenty square miles was purchased by the government of Naimbanna, king of Sierra Leone, on which to locate the proposed colony.  About four hundred Negroes and sixty white persons, the greater portion of the latter being “women of the town,"[103] were embarked on “The Nautilus,” Capt.  Thompson, and landed at Sierra Leone on the 9th of May, 1787.  The climate was severe, the sanitary condition of the place vile, and the habits of the people immoral.  The African fever, with its black death-stroke, reaped a harvest; while the irregularities and indolence of the majority of the colonists, added to the deeds of plunder perpetrated by predatory bands of savages, reduced the number of the colonists to about sixty-four souls in 1791.

The dreadful news of the fate of the colony was borne to the philanthropists in England.  But their faith in colonization stood as unblanched before the revelation as the Iron Duke at Waterloo.  An association was formed under the name of “St. George’s Bay,” but afterwards took the name of the “Sierra Leone Company,” with a capital stock of one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, with such humanitarians as Granville Sharp, Thornton, Wilberforce, and Clarkson among its directors.  The object of the company was to push forward the work of colonization.  One hundred Europeans landed at Sierra Leone in the month of February, 1792, and were followed in March by eleven hundred and thirty-one Negroes.  A large number of them had served in the British army during the Revolutionary War in America, and, accepting the