SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 



251 



retained among these distressed people, for the 

 instruction of their children : but through a 

 culpable negligence, no school was regularly 

 kept. The school house was fallen into a dila- 

 pidated state, and the appointed schoolmaster 

 appeared to be nearly superannuated, though 

 in the receipt of twenty-five pounds, by an 

 annual remittance from England, for his ex- 

 pected employment in teaching the negro 

 children. In an examination of more than 

 twenty who happened to be at the Log House, 

 not one of the children could read, or give me 

 an answer to the most common, and simple 

 questions in religion. 



It was gratifying to find that the Society of 

 Friends, so distinguished for their steady, zea- 

 lous, active opposition to the Slave Trade, had 

 expressed their sympathy towards these people 

 of colour in the wilderness. They had sent 

 them papers of information, relative to the plans 

 of the American Colonization Society, and were 

 solicitous that they should return to their na- 

 tive soil. Some of them had been accustomed 

 to use the hoe, and the plough, and 1 was told 

 of a few among them, who were tolerably good 

 mechanics. They were far, however, from being 

 industrious, and appeared altogether unsettled 

 in their situation. Where this is the case, pro- 



