Crossing the River (3 page)

Saint Paul’s River, Liberia

October 22nd, 1835

My Dear Father,

This letter leaves me in not a good state of health. I have had the fever, but now embrace the present opportunity of writing a few lines, my intention being to forward them to you by means of the Liberia packet which sails in a few days. I sincerely hope that my letter might find yourself and your wife in better circumstances than those which presently assault my person. It is to be hoped that you may live a long number of years, blessed by the Lord in many ways, and do more good on earth.

I am no longer of Monrovia, having relocated into the heart of the country. Before I left that place I wrote to you on two occasions by Mr Andrews, and once more directly, but I suppose my communication was transmitted into several hands and you did not get it, which is often the way. You know best. I am unable to give you intelligence as to the progress of others for we live so far apart, some few in this direction, but most in the capital town. I am truly now a pioneer of sorts. I am striving to do all the good I can amongst these natives, who form a most dominant majority. To this end I am even speaking a little of their crude dialect, which is very hard to learn. I can, if truth be told, understand it better than I can speak it, but with practice this state of affairs will regulate itself. Since receiving the land, I have not had the opportunity of doing much, but I have made some significant improvements. The first of these has involved the construction of a primitive school building under the watchful supervision of myself. The natives worked with glee, and now this heathen village has a mission school where I am able to instruct in writing intelligibly, in the Bible, in arithmetic, and in geography. I labor purposefully as a teacher in the hope that these heathens may one day soon become lettered. Come Sabbath, our school is transformed, by the simple method of my decree, into a small Baptist church where I preach and provide the multitudes with the opportunity of hearing the Gospel.

The second of my significant improvements relates to efforts to till the soil. I have made a start of farming, and cleared some fifteen to twenty acres of my land, and have planted it down with coffee trees, and cotton, and potatoes, and cassava, and much more kinds of plants such as this Africa affords. I have been led to understand that this land is exceedingly rich, and will eventually yield up everything in abundance. That is, if the seed is properly planted, and taken care of by keeping it clear of grass and weeds. With common industry, a man can raise more of everything than he can use, and have much to sell besides. I soon hope to be in the prosperous situation where I might expect to exchange the results of my labors upon the land for foreign produce. I am led to believe that a little of this trading occurs in Monrovia, but I am now, for good or ill, a man of the country. I will enclose with this letter some paw-paw seeds which are dried in ashes. Perhaps they are cured incorrectly. If they do not produce the required result, I shall procure a variety, fix them as they should be, and forward them by the next chance.

I will share with you a few words about the animals in this place. I have been visited by a cunning leopard in the past few days, who has taken off with both goats and hogs, two of each if my count is correct. I watched out for this creature but could never see him. Leopards often visit Monrovia, where they walk the streets at night committing great depredations. Here, far removed from what passes as civilization, their task is made considerably easier. Recently, I killed a snake of nine feet in length, and the proud possessor of a tremendous girth. He was black and red in color and basking on the margin of the river with an air of unfettered superiority. In addition, we have quite a variety of handsome birds, although their names still elude me.

As you know, an industrious man who is free from debt of any kind can live in tolerable comfort, yet when a man becomes involved in debt, whether it be his fault or not, he often suffers much from this circumstance. A little aid from you, dear Father, would do me much good at this time. ‘Giving doth not impoverish.’ I would be glad to plague you a little to see if you would send me out some trade goods that I might in the due passage of time answer with coffee, ginger, arrowroot and other materials that I will presently crop from my land. Good white shirting, shoes, stockings, tobacco, flour, port, mackerels, molasses, sugar, and a small flitch of bacon and other little trifles as you find convenient to send. Though cotton is raised in this country, there is at present not so much as to be able to manufacture clothes. If you could send some good strong cloth in order that shirts, pantaloons and other clothes be made available for the modesty of the natives hereabouts, I should be most grateful. A half-keg of 10
d
. nails and a half-keg of 4
d
. nails would be very acceptable. I also need some borax but cannot get it in this country. Please mark the box with my full name and direct it to the Saint Paul’s River settlement, where full knowledge and appreciation of my Christian work grows with each merciful day.

Since the passing of my wife and child, my wants are few, and of course they are easily supplied in this land of darkness. I have nothing to fear. America is, according to my memory, a land of milk and honey, where people are not easily satisfied. Things that seemed to me then to hold so much value are now, in this new country, and in my new circumstances, without value. All that I now wish for is enough to give me comfort and some small happiness whilst I dwell in this world, for I have learned, by means of sad experience, and by close study of the scripture, that we carry nothing out of this world when we go hence. In addition to my latest bout with the African fever, I have also a complaint in the hip which you may remember occurred before I left America as a consequence of being thrown from an unruly horse. I hope to meet in Heaven with my dearly departed Sally and my only boy, York, and thereafter dwell with them for ever. This blessed hope, to meet where there will be no further trouble, no vainglorious toil, no more parting, and to sing the praises of God and the Lamb for ever and ever! Surely the religion of Christ is my greatest comfort in this dark world. I pray that the Lord may bless, protect and defend you through life by his unerring counsel, and that when the voyage of life is over and He has no more for you to do on earth, He will take you to live with Him in glory.

My glorious asylum in Liberia remains under the protection of a wise God, who promises to be a God of all nations, provided they obey and dutifully serve Him. Although a country with some inconveniences, there remain many privileges to be enjoyed, for any man can live here that will work, although the quality of man that is these days choosing to make this new country his home leaves me with some cause for concern. Two months past I paid a visit to Monrovia to try to force the hand of that scoundrel who clings to what is rightfully mine. There I encountered others of a similar mind to Mr Gray, unchristian in their behavior and vulgar in their demeanor, whose only visible occupation seemed to be to prey upon poor unfortunate creatures such as myself. True, there are many fine, charitable societies abounding in Monrovia, and churches of all denominations, but I fear that unless the agents of the Society exercise a firmer grip, the affairs of this young country might yet slide out of course. I chanced to spend a part of one morning in conversation with Ellis Thornton Williams, of whom you no doubt have fond memory. You will be pleased to hear report that he has settled in the country to the north of our capital town, and cleared land and planted a fine crop of rice, corn and cassavas. He has on his farm about two dozen Congo boys, the greater number of them having been rescued from the dungeons of a slaver by a British man-of-war. He has very near ninety acres under cultivation, is blessed with a brace of fine sons, and is in tolerably fine health. This chance meeting served to lift my spirits, for by this time I was convinced that the character of all our Monrovian people of color was rotting in this African heat. My conclusion is that a man’s spirit and wholesomeness is more pleasantly watered and nourished among the heathen natives of the country, for there one can daily observe the evidence of Christian work which marks out the superiority of the American life over the African.

Now a few words to my dear beloved mother which I trust you will be kind enough to read to her:–

Dear Mother, your advice to me when a child remains in my breast as fresh and as full of wisdom as the day you delivered it. I pray that God will spare you to behold your son’s face once more. I am sorry to inform you of the death of Solomon Charles, whom I believe was known to you in earlier times. Beyond this sad occurrence, there is little further in the way of news. When Sally was asked by your son, ‘How stands it between thee and thy God?’ her answer was, ‘All is clear. I am willing to go.’ Yes, these were her words, but two days before her death. Mother, how stands it with Uncle Daniel? Is he still living, or should I expect to meet him in Heaven? Since I have been in this country, I have been stricken with the African fever on many occasions. I am still not full with health, but I am somewhat improved. Yesterday I moved amongst the natives who labor about my land. They are good workers, although they require a stern and watchful supervision. Now dear mother, I must come to a close in the knowledge that God and Mr Edward Williams will take care of you. Give my respects to all, white and black. I remain your affectionate son, Nash Williams.

Dear Father, I wish you to be so kind as to remember my best respects to my old fellow servants, and any other enquiring friends. Hoping that they will behave themselves to you. If they fail to do so, you must remind them of the many kindnesses that you have showered upon my humble person. You are ever present in my affections. Perhaps you might dispatch some books for my school. Valuable readers are a most necessary part of my mission. Also, I would be glad to learn my true age. When I write again I shall try and send you some curiosities. I subscribe myself a servant of God, and the friend of my fellow men. As this letter will reach you, I hope, by Christmas, I will conclude by wishing your good lady wife and yourself a Merry Christmas, and sincerely hope that you both enjoy many more. Farewell, dear sir, and receive the kindest wishes of your humble servant and affectionate son.

Nash Williams

Saint Paul’s River, Liberia

March 10th, 1839

My Dear Father,

I am taking this favorable opportunity of writing a few hasty lines in the hope that they might be conveyed to you by the departure of the vessel
Mathilda
which will presently leave these shores for America. Your letter reached me on Feb. 5th, and was read with great joy. I declaimed it aloud to the people here and its kind contents caused some tears to flow. I am sad to learn that your brother has been called to his long and happy home, but reassured by the information that his was only a short illness of ten to twelve hours. That your good lady wife, Amelia, still enjoys rude health must be a great blessing to you. I would be happy if you could give her my regards, and inform her that there are many in this dark country of Liberia for whom she represents the highest achievement in womankind.

Why, dear Father, you chose to ignore my previous letters, you do not indicate. I must assume that this represents your either not receiving them, or your finding their contents so ignorant and poor in expression that you rightly deemed them unworthy of response. Whatever your reasoning, I am overjoyed to receive news of my friends and family, with the one obvious exception. What news for yourself? Mr Lambert has taken an Alabama woman by the name of Bertha, and her son Prince, to live with him in his brick house in Monrovia. It seems he is doing well in business, although this illiterate woman chooses to behave herself improperly. And perhaps you have already heard, by means of some other source, that old brother Taylor and sister Nancy have both lost all religion. The former has in addition turned out to be a great and scandalous drunkard. He is accused of habitual intoxication, much nocturnal revelling, lewdness, and in fact everything that characterizes the immoral man. You may correctly deduce from the above that I have severed all connections with this man. They say that his decline was occasioned by the misfortune of losing his youngest son to a sore mouth.

Of the two new arrivants that you recommended to my care, first good news and then sad. Young Solomon Williams is now comfortably situated here with us. He is working the fields for seventy-five cents a day in the hope that he might one day purchase some farmer’s tools to commence farming for himself. When he first approached my presence, I had no knowledge of him, save the name he bore. After a little discourse I recognized the fellow. At first he tested his freedom, and acted like a young horse out of the stable, but I soon reined him in. He is now learning his trade finely, and is upon the whole a very proper boy. He suits me well, and may one day (if he continues in a sober fashion) make a useful man for our young country. Of the second arrivant, only sad news. After surviving a difficult voyage of forty-nine days, marred by an outbreak of smallpox which took the lives of some thirty persons, he soon departed, but his end was peace. He was taken sick on a Monday and his end was Wednesday. His illness, though severe, was of only three days’ duration when it terminated fatally, his chief complaint being of a pain in the head. He lay in Monrovia and, according to sources, the Reverend visited him each day, and questioned him concerning his soul’s salvation, and whether the way from earth to glory was clear or not, to which he would always answer the same, that his hopes were anchored in Jesus Christ. He was, come Wednesday, perfectly sensible of his death as he fell asleep in Jesus’s arms, never more to have earthly communion with our kind, trusting to that day when we may meet again and grasp hands in friendship in our Father’s kingdom where there shall be no further parting to endure.

You are not aware perhaps that I have recently established myself and my school in a new settlement. It is somewhat further up the same Saint Paul’s River, but located in a very good place. I continue to make all the improvements I can, and I have quiet hopes for the future. I have now fourteen boys in school and two girls, all of whom are making some progress in reading the word of God. They are all native children, and I willingly labor amongst these little heathens, doing all I can according to your wishes. Last November I took a young American woman, a recent emigrant from Maryland, as my assistant and teacher. But alas she was soon sacrificed to the climate and called home to rest. I have every reason to believe that her journey was a peaceful one. Hers was the third death in the mission in a matter of weeks. We lost a boy with consumption, his malady lingering for a cruel length of time. The other unfortunate one died speedily, being seized with stomach pains at five in the morning, yet he caused such a commotion as to raise the whole village. By dawn he was no more, but his sad demise convinced a handful of our
scholars
to run off, for the native people among whom we live are still very superstitious. If someone dies suddenly, they are sure that somebody must have bewitched them, and off they will go to the grand devil man of the village who will, in exchange for some small trifle, tell them who it was that bewitched the person that died. This person will then be fed some poison in order to dispatch him for his wrongful deed. This appears to me not an entirely unjust method of administering justice, and one from which we of the so-called civilized world might learn something valuable.

Indeed, the natives are a much-maligned people in this dark and benighted country. Some of our less respectable emigrants find cause to torment and exploit these creatures, rather than try to fuse into their souls the values of American civilization with which their good masters labored to anoint them. In our neighboring settlement, a Mr Charles, an American, his money grown short due to the ruin of his smallholding near Monrovia,
borrowed
two native boys, informing their fathers that he was going to teach them English. Instead, he cruelly carried them to a slave factory and sold them for the equivalent of twelve dollars. In conversing with the natives, I often ask them how it is they cannot read and write like the white man (they call us all white man), and I generally receive reply that their gods had asked them to choose between the land and their livestock, or books, and they had chosen the former. At this juncture I often protest, and talk about the ingenious nature of native embroidery and craft, my contention being that our God has blessed the native with as much sense as any white man if only they would put this in exercise. The native is generally resigned to finally admitting that this
white man
does talk true, for I think they have become much fond of me.

Sadly, not all
masters
will converse in such a manner with these natives. Only last year, in an attack spurred on by revenge for native depredations upon settlers, the strongest and most populous native town on this part of the coast was taken, burned, and the natives powerfully routed, for they can be very savage when they think they have the advantage. At times like this, it is strange to think that these people of Africa are called our ancestors, for with some of them you may do all you can but they still will be your enemy. For many months now, there has been no sound of war amongst the neighboring tribes, and the affairs of the country appear quite smooth. We are all truly grateful that the war horn is heard no more, and the natives continue to display some friendship, for in this way we might avoid foolish loss of life. It was intended that Africa should be a land of freedom, for where else can the man of color enjoy his liberty? Not in Haiti or in Canada. This land of our forefathers, where many delicious fruits grow, is determined still to attract the noblest minds. If you hear any speaking disrespectful of it, I would be grateful if you would tell them to hush their mouths, for a lazy man, be he a gentleman or otherwise, will not prosper in any country should he determine that he will not work. Further, in this republic the practice is to address me as
Mr Williams
and not
Boy
. There are a few white people out here, and they are polite, moving to one side and touching their hats. In Monrovia, I have had occasion to call at their dwellings and to range over the subjects of the day, religious and otherwise. The white man never calls me by anything but my name. I am
Mr Williams
.

Sadly, I do not enjoy the same happy intercourse with the black emigrants hereabouts. Some emigrants, who styled themselves as lay ministers of the Gospel, asked permission to enter my new settlement and to preach the word of God. They gained admission with my blessing, and with that of the agents of the colony, as my present settlement lies beyond the furthest position in the interior to which we are generally encouraged to travel. However, our relationship soon soured as they took pleasure in forever recounting the number of hopeful converts who resided with them in their previous settlement, and how these converts were now filled with the Holy Ghost, their confidences awakened, and how they had become more friendly by the day. It was as though they made this continual assault upon my person in order to insult what they assumed to be the so-far modest achievements of my present mission. It appeared that amongst their biblical attachments were Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian sentiments, and that so ill-schooled were they that clearly they could not distinguish one variety from the next, but I refrained from raising this subject. That they had truly embraced religion, that they displayed the patience to resist the temptations of the evil one, I did not doubt, but their criticism of my
dictatorial
manner and their suggestions on the moral value of my behavior proved too much, and, soon after their arrival, I ordered them to withdraw. They did so, but not before they had spread malicious gossip abroad that a child recently delivered to a native woman bore a strong and suspicious likeness to one Nash Williams. I countered, suggesting that this would appear only natural in that we shared the same ancestry, but in the minds of some emigrant farmers, a brace of whose number chose to leave my settlement, it appeared that the seeds of damage that these
ministers
had so wilfully scattered, were now finally beginning to bear some fruit.

Soon after the expulsion of my
ministers of the Gospel
, it became clear that I would have to look for one who was willing and able to help me in my labors amongst the heathen flock. To this end, I traveled to Monrovia, where I engaged a young lady who was recently arrived from America, being formerly the property of a Mr Young of Pennsylvania. She informed me that she had come out to Africa last September, and had passed through her acclimatizing fevers very well. She seemed, to my eyes, ably prepared for the business of mission work, having been raised up in one of the best Christian families of America. The young lady returned with me up the Saint Paul’s River, and although clearly a little disenchanted at first casting a glance over our small Christian empire, her eyes soon accustomed themselves to the more primitive conditions of the interior, so much so that she now acts and behaves as though she has known nothing else. I expect to be wedlocked to her in a short time, if life lasts and all things hold out. Perhaps you would be so kind as to send out something to start on in the way of making a living as a newly married couple, for you know that my time is not consumed in speculative affairs which are likely to result in my achieving worldly gains. The colony is not now as flourishing as it was, trade is dull, and the past season very unfavorable to the growth of all our main staffs of life.

As respects coffee, these days it sells at fifty cents per pound, but it grows wild and often natives and monkeys take it. Loaf sugar sells at twenty-eight dollars per hundred. Fresh beef will fetch twelve cents per pound. Cattle sell at fifteen dollars each, sheep two dollars, goats a dollar, hogs at different prices according to size from one dollar to fifteen, ducks at one dollar each, and fowls at two dollars per dozen. Laborers can be hired for twenty cents per day, and a person might have good common people to work the ground and make it as productive as that in America. But one word of explanation as to why such as I, who plant and work the land with application, still struggle, is to be found in the maxim that it is several years before farm land will pay. It has always been so, and so it will remain. There are some that have come to this place that have got rich, and done well, by using the natives as slaves. But invariably this means that the poor, unskilled people who come from America have no chance to make a living, for the natives do all the work. There is little chance for farming at Monrovia, for it is all stones. Out here, in the interior, there is good land, but unless one wishes to administer one’s province in an uncharitable and cruel manner, the times are hard for all who would till the soil honestly.

Dear Father, perhaps you will please send me one bonnet and an umbrella, if you please. And some cloth to make one white frock, as there is none to be found in this country. These things will not prove difficult for you to get, for there is plenty in America and nothing here. Can you please send some valuable books, such as history, and a dictionary, and writing paper and quills or steel pens. Also flour and pork, and other articles you may think will be of service to me, including a hoe, an axe, some trowels and some hammers. If you, or any of your kind family to whom I am already under so many obligations, shall send anything for me, it shall not be misplaced charity, for provision is scarce.

I was very sorry to hear that my mother was dead, but I take great consolation in knowing that she has gone home to rest and we have nothing to do but to prepare to meet her. I am further consoled by your heartbroken intelligence that she died with Jesus in her soul and Heaven in her view, and her confidence well-anchored in the Lord. I have been in Africa a long time and I wish to come home as soon as possible. I wish you to write to me by the first emigrant vessel and let me know on what terms I can come back, and if I will be interrupted by white people. William Young left here shipped aboard a storeship, and I have heard from him twice. He is in Cincinnati acting as a porter in a merchant’s store or warehouse, so it must be possible to successfully return. I would like very much to see you once in the flesh, and this may prove my last chance to cross the Atlantic. It is naturally my full intention to return to Liberia, for it is the best country for the black man that is to be found on the face of the earth. Older nations, with different styles of government, may be slow to acknowledge all that is due to us for whom the golden sun of liberty is newly rising. But Liberia is doing her part in improving human affairs, and stands now tall and proud with other regions of the civilized world.