chiefly of a religious character; and a general air of domestic comfort pervades the whole, which, perhaps more than any thing else, bears evidence of the advanced state of intelligence at which they have arrived.  This grade is nearly altogether occupied in shopkeeping, hawking, and other mercantile pursuits.  At sales of prize goods, public auctions, and every other place affording a probability of cheap bargains, they are to be seen in great numbers, where they club together in numbers of from three to six, seven, or more, to purchase large lots or unbroken bales.  And the scrupulous honesty with which the subdivision of the goods is afterwards made cannot be evidenced more thoroughly than this:  that, common as such transactions are, they have never yet been known to become the subject of controversy or litigation.  The principal streets of Freetown, as well as the approaches to the town, are lined on each side by an almost continuous range of booths and stalls, among which almost every article of merchandise is offered for sale, and very commonly at a cheaper rate than similar articles are sold in the shops of the merchants.

“Two rates of profit are recognized in the mercantile transactions of the European merchants; namely, a wholesale and retail profit, the former varying from thirty to fifty per cent, the latter from fifty to one hundred per cent.  The working of the retail trade in the hands of Europeans requires a considerable outlay in the shape of shop-rent, shopkeepers’ and clerks’ wages, etc.  The liberated Africans were not slow in observing nor in seizing on the advantages which their peculiar position held out for the successful prosecution of the retail trade.

“Clubbing together, as before observed, and holding ready money in their hands the merchants are naturally anxious to execute for them considerable orders on such unexceptionable terms of payment while, on the other hand, the liberated Africans, seeing clearly their advantage, insist most pertinaciously on the lowest possible percentage of wholesale profit.

“Having thus become possessed of the goods at the lowest possible ready-money rate, then subsequent transactions are not closed with the expense of shop-rents, shopkeepers’ and clerks’ wages and subsistence, etc., etc., expenses unavoidable to Europeans.  They are therefore enabled at once to undersell the European retail merchants, and to secure a handsome profit to themselves; a consummation the more easily attained, aided as it is by the extreme simplicity and abstemiousness of their mode of living, which contrast so favorably for them with the expensive and almost necessary luxuries of European life.  Many of this grade possess huge canoes, with which they trade in the upper part of the river, along shore, and in the neighbouring rivers, bringing down rice, palm-oil, cam-wood, ivory, hides, etc., etc., in exchange for British manufactures.