Roads and Trails in Liberia

Abstract

RAVEL in Liberia is still difficult. Although there is an increasing amount of motor road near the centers of commercial activity such as the Firestone Plantations, dependence in the main must be on the native trails, of which thousands of miles are in daily use. The main trails have been improved everywhere for hammock travel, and theoretically, therefore, they should be suitable for motorcycles. But there are many places that can be traveled by hammock carriers that are still too rough for wheels of any kind. Temporary bridges still give way occasionally during the rains; and the most difficult crossings are effected by means of the remarkable suspension bridges of native design, which are good for crossing on foot in single file but exceedingly awkward for anything else. In making a map of Liberia, therefore, one maps the trails. Travel by water is limited in about the same proportion to primitive methods. There are motor launches on the main rivers near the larger towns, but they cannot run the rapids that occur 20 to 30 miles from the sea. Coastwise shipping and travel depend ultimately on surfboats, except on one or two rivers that can be entered by small steamers. Scores of tidal estuaries are traveled only by dugout canoes, some of which are seaworthy. The type known as the Accra canoe is fitted with sails and handled with great skill on the sea. But the water mileage in Liberia is made largely by the crude dugouts, which draw only a few inches, and even these do not attempt to run the rapids. Consequently most of Liberia's waterways are unused. To the tribes of the interior, rivers are mysterious and are actually avoided. They do not know how to make canoes. They do not even fish in the rivers. Few of them can swim. They go freely into small streams, but they are afraid of the rivers. The coastal tribes-Grebo, Kru, Bassa, De, and some clans of Mende and Vai-like the water and make great use of it. They build towns near the high-water mark and travel along the riverbanks even when they cannot use their canoes. Some of them have penetrated rather far into the interior for trade and have settled along the rivers. But even here the main routes have a tendency to skirt the rivers at a distance, avoiding the flood plains. Behind the coastal peoples live tribes or remnants of tribes who still come down to the sea to fish at certain seasons of the year and carry the smoked fish back home. Some of these have treaties with the coastal tribes allowing them this privilege. Some of them have reserved narrow corridors to the sea-the De, for example, who have