These are undeniable evidences of progress in physical well-being. When it comes to mental culture, less can be said. Of the crowd at the St. Helena church, not one in twenty of the adults can read, though they have had three years of partial and interrupted opportunities. But, on the other hand, not one in twenty of the boys and girls was unable to read. They do not seem so anxious themselves to get “white folks’ larnin” as at Charleston and other points to the northward; but every parent is painfully desirous that his children should learn; and many of them are known to take private lessons at home from their children. The latter learn rapidly; they tell the same story everywhere here, just as it has been told down the whole coast from Fortress Monroe. Experienced teachers say they can see no difference in the facility with which these and ordinary white children at the North learn to read. But this is comparatively valueless as a test of negro intellectual capacity. Reading, writing, memorizing, whatever is imitative, or may be learned by rote, will be rapidly acquired; and no schools have yet advanced far enough to show what the average negro mind will do when it grapples with higher branches that require original thought. Nearly thirty thousand negroes have been settled by General Saxton, (as he informed us over his hospitable dinner table, on our return from St. Helena,) on these islands and adjacent plantations of the main land. Of these, seventeen thousand are now self-supporting. Between twelve and thirteen thousand of those who have come in latest from the interior still draw rations, but all do it with the distinct understanding that they and their farms will be held responsible for the re-payment; and the experience of the Government with the others shows that this debt may be reckoned a safe and short one. None have been forced to come, and the locations upon the plantations have all been made to the satisfaction of the negroes themselves.