NEGRO HABITS. 11 



" It has been said that by making those captured Xegros 

 soldiers, a service was rendered them : this I doubt. Formerly 

 it was most true that a soldier in a black regiment w^as better 

 off than a slave ; but certainlv a free African in the West 

 Indies now is infinitely in a better situation than a soldier, 

 not only in a pecuniary point of view, but in almost every 

 other respect. 



" To the African savao-e, wdiile beins: drilled into the duties 

 of a soldier, many things seem absolute tyranny which 

 would appear to a civilized man a mere necessary restraint. 

 To keep the restless body of an African Negro in a position to 

 wdnch he has not been accustomed to cramp his splay-feet, 

 w^ith his great toes standing out, into European shoes made 

 for feet of a different form to place a collar round his neck, 

 wdiich is called a stock, and which to him is cruel torture 

 above all, to confine him every night to his barracks are 

 almost insupportable. One unacquainted wdth the habits of 

 the Xegro cannot conceive wdth wdiat abhorrence he looks 

 on having his disposition to nocturnal rambles checked by 

 barrack regulations.-^ 



" Formerly the ' King's man,' as the black soldier loved 



to call himself, looked (not without reason) contemptuously 



on the planter's slave, although he himself was after all but 



^ See Brj'an Edwards on the character of the African Xegros ; also Chan- 

 velon's Histoire de la Martinique. 



