to make an advance, a measure unknown of old, and to pay more than double
hire for working on the Gold Coast. These races, Kruboys, Grebos, and
their cognates, have not improved during the last score of years. Their
headmen were old hands approaching the fifties: now they are youths of
twenty-five. The younger sort willingly engaged for three years; now they
begin to notch their tallies for every new moon, and they wax home-sick
after the tenth month. Once they were content to carry home a seaman's
chest well filled with 'chow-chow' and stolen goods; in these days they
must have ready money to deal with the Bristol barques.

Having before described the 'Kráo' and the Kru republic, with its four
recognised castes, I need not repeat myself. [Footnote: _Wanderings_, &c.,
vol. ii. chap. vi., which ends with a short specimen of the language.] We
again admired the magnificent development of muscle, which stood out in
bunches as on the Farnese Hercules, set off by the most appropriate dress,
a coloured oblong of loin-cloth, tucked in at the waist. We marvelled too
at the contrast of Grecian figure and cynocephalous features, whose
frizzly thatch, often cut into garden-plots, is unnecessarily protected by
a gaudy greasy cap.

In morals too these men are as peculiar as they are contradictory. They
work, and work well: many old Coasters prefer them to all other tribes.
They are at their best in boats or on board ship, especially ships of war,
where they are disciplined. For carrying burdens, or working in the bush,
they are by no means so valuable and yet, as will be seen, they are highly
thought of by some miners in the Gold Mines. In the house they are at
their worst; and they are a nuisance to camp, noisy and unclean. Their
chief faults are lying and thieving; they are also apt to desert, to grow
discontented, to presume, and ever to ask for more. These qualities are
admirably developed in our headman, Toby Johnson, and his gang. I should