SETTLEMENTS OK THE DEMERARY, &C. 211 



and wages. Some of them, besides being provided with pro- 

 visions and grog, received three joes, or five pounds ten shil- 

 lings sterling per month, which eventually enabled many an 

 individual to purchase a share of his master's boat, or to get 

 one for himself, in which case he would be as a carrier, or 

 droger, to those estates which did not keep craft of their own. 

 If he was a careful industrious servant, his employer generally 

 found it for his interest to take him into partnership, or al- 

 low him a proportion of the profits arising from his carrying 

 for other estates. In a similar way were negro and mulatto 

 tradesmen, such as carpenters, bricklayers, coopers, mill- 

 wrights, tailors, and shoemakers, induced to come over and 

 settle among us. These people, of course, worked under the 

 direction of white merchants, who had been engaged and 

 brought over from England and Scotland, but principally from 

 the latter. By these means, we not only increased our num- 

 ber of good tradesmen by importation, but induced many of 

 our own negroes to become such, by apprenticing them to 

 that trade they preferred ; young boys, from the age of twelve 

 to fifteen, were generally fixed on for that purpose, and it has 

 been remarked of the African negroes, that those of the Congo 

 and Elbo nations were the better adapted, and quicker at ac- 

 quiring a knowledge of a trade, than any others. I knew a 

 carpenter, who had from fifteen to twenty boys belonging to 

 different people, that were articled to him for two, three, and 

 four years. I cannot conceive for what reason such long ap- 



E e 2 



