guns and ammunition, and where the Grebes slaughtered my true and trusty
steward, Selim Agha.

I must allow myself a few lines in memory of a typical man. Selim was a
Nubian of lamp-black skin; but his features were Semitic down to the
nose-bridge, and below it, like the hair, distinctly African: this mixture
characterises the negroid as opposed to the negro. In the first fourth of
the present century he was bought by Mr. Thurburn--_venerabile nomen_--of
Alexandria, and sent for education to North Britain. There he learned to
speak Scotch, to make turtle-soup, to stuff birds, to keep accounts, and
to be useful and valuable in a series of ways. Then his thoughts, full of
philanthropy, turned towards the 'old mother.' The murder of Dr. Barth's
companion, Vogel, in 1856, originated seven fruitless expeditions to
murderous Wadáy, and he made sundry journeys into the interior. I believe
that he took service for some time with Lieutenant (now Sir John H.)
Glover before he became my factotum between 1860 and 1865. When I left the
Coast he transferred himself to Liberia, where, he wrote, they proposed to
'run him for the presidency.' Selim joined the Monrovians during the Grebo
war as an assistant-surgeon, his object being to mitigate the horrors of
the campaign; and he met his death on October 9, 1875, during the
mismanaged attack on Grebo Big Town. Captain A. B. Ellis, in his amusing
and outspoken 'West African Sketches,' quotes from the 'Liberian
Independent' the following statement: 'Mr. Selim Agha was also overtaken
by the barbarous Greboes, and one of them, "Bye Weah" by name, after
allowing him to read his Bible, which he had by him in his pocket, and
which he made a present of to the barbarian, chopped his body all about,
chopped off his head, which he took to his town with eighteen others, and
threw the body with the gift into the swamp.' The account sounds
trustworthy, especially that about the Bible: it is exactly what the poor
fellow would have done. But many have assured me that he was slaughtered