516 HISTORY 



mendation to the home government to send any others that came to the 

 Bahamas to the colony of Trinidad. 



On the arrival of William Colebrooke in the following year (1835), the 

 policy of the local government and its recommendations as to the captives was 

 entirely changed. The new Executive saw throughout the Bahamas large tracts 

 of unoccupied lands (he knew not how unproductive they were) and imagined 

 that they would be suitable for settlements of captive Africans. He attended 

 an inspection of a settlement of these captives soon after his arrival in the 

 Colony/" and found out that they were healthy and well provided for. He 

 determined at once to secure as many of these Africans as possible, to have them 

 sent hither from other colonies, if necessary, and to settle them on this vacant 

 Crown property where, he hastily concluded, they could soon provide for them- 

 selves after a kindly paternal assistance from the government."' Thus would 

 he build up a new class of subjects of his sovereign. He adhered to his hasty 

 conclusions in the face of the decline, under his very eyes, of the settlements at 

 Adelaide and Carmichael, on JSTew Providence Island. He attributed the 

 failure of these two settlements, to the incapacity of the superintendents.'^^ 

 Here William Colebrooke would have erected a refuge for unfortunate iVfricans 

 captured by slave hunters, all unaware that starvation threatened those who 

 attempted to live on these barren lands. He wished also to have here an 

 asylum for decrepit and discharged soldiers, from the West Indian regiments 

 of the British empire."' But he was unable to convince the Colonial Secre- 

 tary of State of the soundness of his views in this respect."" 



The plan suggested by Colebrooke was to settle these ignorant black men 

 in close settlements on the Out-islands, apparently unthoughtful of the meager 

 refining influences that existed even in the better populated parts of the Colony. 

 Lord Glenelg could not consent to the formation of such settlements where men 

 would not learn the English tongue, nor imbibe English democratic ideas, nor 

 l)ecome attached to the British Crown. Colebrooke admitted the desirability of 

 these things but still hoped to Avin favor for his project. He desired to have 

 the captives brought into the Colony and apprenticed to the inhabitants. He 



«= Colebrooke to Aberdeen, No. 13. 



*^^ Colebrooke to Aberdeen, No. 18 and No. 51. 



*-* Loc. cit., No. 41. He was persuaded that they ought to be able to subsist 

 themselves in such settlements by their own labor. Much work had been done in 

 these two places under the direction of Sir James Smyth to make them desirable 

 places for residence. 



^■'^ Loc. cit.. No. 51. 



""Ds., S. St., 1836, No. 86. 



