offer of the British Government, took land in this colony as a reward for services performed in the army.  Another fever did its hateful work; and fifty or sixty Europeans, and many blacks, fell under its parching and consuming touch.[104] Jealous feuds rent the survivors, and idleness palsied every nerve of industry in the colony.  In 1794 a French squadron besieged the place, and the people sustained a loss of about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  Once more an effort was made to revive the place, and get its drowsy energies aroused in the discharge of necessary duties.  Some little good began to show itself; but it was only the tender bud of promise, and was soon trampled under the remorseless heel of five hundred and fifty insurrectionary maroons from Jamaica and Nova Scotia.

The indifferent character of the colonists, and the hurtful touch of the climate, had almost discouraged the friends of the movement in England.  It was now the year 1800.  This vineyard planted by good men yielded “nothing but leaves.”  No industry had been developed, no substantial improvement had been made, and the future was veiled in harassing doubts and fears.  The money of the company had almost all been expended.  The company barely had the signs of organic life in it, but the light of a beautiful Christian faith had not gone out across the sea in stalwart old England.  The founders of the colony believed that good management would make the enterprise succeed:  so they looked about for a master hand to guide the affair.  On the 8th of August, 1807, the colony was surrendered into the hands of the Crown, and was made an English colony.  During the same year in which this transfer was made, Parliament declared the slave-trade piracy; and a naval squadron was stationed along the coast for the purpose of suppressing it.  At the first, many colored people of good circumstances, feeling that they would be safe under the English flag, moved from the United States to Sierra Leone.  But the chief source of supply of population was the captured slaves, who were always unloaded at this place.  When the English Government took charge of Sierra Leone, the population was 2,000, the majority of whom were from the West Indies or Nova Scotia.  In 1811 it was nearly 5,000; in 1820 it was 12,000; it 1833 it was 30,000; in 1835 it was 35,000; in 1844 it was 40,000; in 1869 it was 55,374, with but 129 white men.  On the 31st of March, 1827, the slaves that had been captured and liberated by the English squadron numbered 11,878; of which there were 4,701 males above, and 1,875 under, fourteen years of age.  There were 2,717 females above, and 1,517 under, the age of fourteen, besides 1,068 persons who settled in Freetown, working in the timber-trade.

With the dreadful scourge of slavery driven from the sea, the sanitary condition of the place greatly improved; and with a vigorous policy of order and education enforced, Sierra Leone began to bloom and blossom as a rose.  When the slaver disappeared, the merchant-vessel came on her peaceful mission of commerce.