SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 215 



their disposition when properly treated and soothed. I am 

 Hconvinced their's is a character but superficially known, and 

 is worthy of a particular investigation. 



From an increase of cultivated extent of country, employ- 

 ment for negroes of course followed, and as those planters 

 who began with small capitals, were debarred the advantage 

 of stocking their estates with a sufficient number of labourers, 

 the most expedient plan for accomplishing their work, was to 

 hire negroes. Managers and overseers of estates are always 

 enabled, by frugality, to save as much from their salaries as 

 to purchase a negro, whom they let or hire out to work. The 

 next year they can purchase two, and the year after, two 

 more. In this progressive manner, many men have laid the 

 foundation of fortunes. The possession of one negro, has 

 eventually made them owners of fifteen or twenty, at which 

 time they are formed into a Task Gang ; which is so called 

 from its undertaking to do a specific quantity of work, such 

 as clearing and preparing so many acres of land, draining and 

 planting the same ; which they are paid for by the acre. 

 Many of these gangs are in existence, and are of great utility 

 to new settlers. Some of them have fixed residences up the 

 rivers and creeks, and when plantation work does not offer, 

 are employed in timber cutting for the building of houses, 

 mill frames, and various other uses so constantly in request on 

 estates. In Europe, the abolition of vassalage seems to have 



