The pioneer women of Liberia were missionaries, soldiers and counselors and directors in matters of state as well. They were women of peace, too, just the angels that young Liberia mostly needed at that time; and while they exhausted every effort to preserve it, they failed. Hostilities, wars and famines were their constant companions. The native chiefs, the very ones who had sold the land, would have no pleas for peace. With these brave heroines it was now battle or famine unto death, with the greatest doubts as to the results. These women of peace here became women of war. They helped their stronger allies plan fortifications, mount cannon, distribute ammunition; they served as picket guards, and in other ways encouraged, assisted, stimulated and inspired those who struggled to strike, strike till there could be no relaxation of vigilance—till the enemy were repulsed. The energetic pioneers, enfeebled by severe and protracted self-denials, would spend sleepless nights with fever and then work all day building breast-works, stockades and clearing the dense forest in front of their few pieces of artillery. Thus passed many dark and rainy days,
"Some days must be dark and dreary,"
until early in November in that year more than eight hundred natives, with war-paint and whoop, made a concentrated attack on the settlers' most outlying stockade. And had these natives, numbering more than ten to one of their antagonists, not stopped to plunder, they could have swept the settlement, by one determined rush, into the sea. Danger so imminent was a tonic that not even the African fever could withstand.
