3-053-575 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Cape Palmas and Harper Town, west coast of Africa, 1873. 'Cape Palmas is that point of the West African coast where the Gulf of Guinea opens directly to the eastward, so that the shore runs henceforth mainly from west to east, through 18 deg. of longitude, to the coast of Biafra, lying north and south, which forms a right angle with it. This place is in the county of Maryland, the easternmost part of the n*gro Republic of Liberia, formed, some half century ago, by the American Colonisation Societies, for the benefit of emancipated n*groes removed from the United States. Cape Palmas is a rocky peninsula, joined to the mainland by a low, sandy isthmus. The highest part of the cape is 74 ft. above sea level. At the eastern end is Harper Town, founded by an American of that name in 1835, consisting of a stone hospital, a comfortable German missionary establishment, presided over by Mr. Hoffmann, a lighthouse, and half a dozen houses, mostly occupied by Liberian traders. The Palmas river, which is about a hundred yards wide, washes the northern side of the peninsula. There is but little more than three feet of water on the bar, and about a fathom inside'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.