SLAVERY. 



261 



for his support and decent appearance, and yet 

 something for what to a person in such a rank 

 in life may be accounted luxury, a slave so 

 circumstanced may in ten years purchase his 

 freedom. If his value is great, it is because his 

 trade is lucrative, so that these things keep pace 

 with each other. The women have likewise some 

 employments by which they may be enabled to 

 gain their liberty ; they make sweetmeats and 

 cakes, and are sent out as cooks, nurses, house- 

 keepers, &c. 



Creole negroes and mulattos are generally ac- 

 counted quicker in learning any trade than the 

 Africans. This superior aptitude to profit by 

 instruction is doubtless produced by their ac- 

 quaintance from infancy with the manners, 

 customs, and language of their masters. From 

 the little experience, however, which I have 

 had, and from the general remarks which I have 

 gathered from others, who might be judged bet- 

 ter acquainted than myself with slaves, I think 

 that an African who has become cheerful, and 

 seems to have forgotten his former state, is a 

 more valuable slave than a Creole negro or mu- 

 latto. He will be generally more fit to be 

 trusted. AFar from the latter submitting quietly 

 to the situation in which they have been born, 

 they bear the yoke of slavery with impatience ; 

 the daily sight of so many individuals of their 

 own casts, who are in a state of freedom, makes 



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