042 HISTORY OF THE [book. iv. 
continuance of the ancient system; assuring me 
they had the means of supporting the strangers 
without difficulty. Many who thus applied, pro¬ 
posed each of them to adopt one of their young 
country-folks in the room of children they had lost 
by death, or had been deprived of in Africa; others, 
because they wished, like the patriarchs of old, to 
see their sons take to themselves wives from their 
own nation and kindred; and all of them, I pre¬ 
sume, because, among other considerations, they 
expected to, revive and retrace in the conversation 
of their new visitors, the remembrance and ideas 
of past pleasures and scenes of their youth. The 
strangers too were best pleased with this arrange¬ 
ment, and ever afterwards considered themselves 
as the adopted children of those by whom they 
were thus protected, calling them parents, and ve¬ 
nerating them as such; and I never knew an in¬ 
stance of the violation of a trust thus solicited and 
bestowed. In the course of eight or ten months, 
provided they are mildly used and kept free of dis¬ 
ease, new people, under these circumstances, be¬ 
come reconciled to the country; begin to get well 
established in their families, their houses and provi¬ 
sion grounds; and prove in all respects as valuable 
as the native or creole negroes A 
* Generally speaking, a creole negro is considered as worth more 
than one imported; but in a valuation, by indifferent persons, of two 
able well disposed negroes, nearly of the same age, the one an Afri¬ 
can, the other a native, no great difference (if any) would be made. 
A child just born is valued at five pounds. 
