stipulated preliminary notice and recalled the ships.

The Sumter arrived on the coast in October, 1859, making her first
anchorage in the lovely harbor on the west side of Prince's Island. That
island, in about 1° 30' north latitude, covered with all the luxuriance
of tropical growth and verdure, and broken into every conceivable shape
of pinnacle, castellated rock and chasm, and frowning precipice,
streaked with silvery threads of leaping streams in their dash to the
sea, is indeed one of the most enchanting spots the eye ever rested on.
The chief inhabitant of the lovely isle was Madame Ferrara, a woman of
French extraction, who lived alone in a big, rambling house, surrounded
by slaves, who cultivated her plantations and prepared the cocoa, palm
oil, yams, and cocoanuts, for the trade that sought her doors.

Filling up with water, the Sumter proceeded to the island of Fernando
Po, a Spanish possession close in to the mainland, in the Bight of
Biafra, where she met several English and French men-of-war, and
received orders for her future movements.

The first thing to do, in accordance with the custom of the squadron,
was the enlisting of fifteen or twenty negroes, known as Kroomen, whose
home is in the Kroo country in upper Guinea, just south of Liberia. They
did all the heavy boat-work of the ship, thus lightening the work of the
crew, and saving them as much as possible from exposure to the effects
of the deadly climate. Great, strapping, muscular fellows, many of them,
with forms that an Apollo might envy, they were trained from infancy to
be as much at home in the water as upon the land, and could swim a dozen
leagues at sea or pull at the oar all day long without seeming fatigue.
Wonderfully expert in their handling of boats, especially in the heavy
surf that rolls in upon the coast with ceaseless volume and resistless