"A few years ago, about one hundred and fifty negro slaves, at different times, succeeded in making their escape from Kentucky into Canada. Captain Stuart, who lived in Upper Canada from 1817 to 1822, was generally acquainted with them, and employed several of them in various ways. He found them as good and as trustworthy laborers, in every respect, as any emigrants from the islands, or from the United States, or as the natives of the country. In 1828, he again visited that country, and found that their numbers had increased by new refugees to about three hundred. They had purchased a tract of woodland, a few miles from Amherstburgh, and were settled on it, had formed a little village, had a minister of their own number, color, and choice, a good old man of some talent, with whom Captain Stuart was well acquainted, and though poor, were living soberly, honestly and industriously, and were peacefully and usefully getting their own living. In consequence of the Revolution in Colombia, all the slaves who joined the Colombian armies, amounting to a considerable number, were declared free. General Bolivar enfranchised his own slaves to the amount of between seven and eight hundred, and many proprietors followed his example. At that time Colombia was overrun by hostile armies, and the masters were often obliged to abandon their property. The black population (including Indians) amounted to nine hundred thousand persons. Of these, a large number was suddenly emancipated, and what has been the effect? Where the opportunities of insurrection have been so frequent, and so tempting, what has been the effect? M. Ravenga declares that the effect has been a _degree of docility on the part of the blacks, and a degree of security on the part of the whites_, unknown in any preceding period of the history of Colombia." "Dr. Walsh[V] states that in Brazil there are six hundred thousand enfranchised persons, either Africans or of African descent, who were either slaves themselves or are the descendants of slaves. He says they are, generally speaking, 'well conducted and industrious persons, who compose indiscriminately different orders of the community. There are among them merchants, farmers, doctors, lawyers, priests and officers of different ranks. Every considerable town in the interior has regiments composed of them.' The benefits arising from them, he adds, have disposed the whites to think of making free the whole negro population." [Footnote V: Walsh's Notes on Brazil, vol. ii. page 365.]