The negroes thus brought to the American colonies were not of one race. A slaver often carried men of different languages, habits, and characteristics, perhaps hereditary enemies. Some were jet black, some mahogany-colored, and others still of a tawny yellow, with flat noses and projecting jaws. This last type belonged to the low, swampy ground at the Niger's delta, and marked the race most adapted to the cultivation of the rice in its swamps, so fatal to white laborers. All this diversity among the negroes accounts for their lack of power and energy to combine in a struggle for freedom. "The negroes that have been slaves in their own country," Hugh Jones says, "make the best servants; for they that have been kings and great men there, are generally lazy, haughty and obstinate." Alas, for these poor magnates from Heathendom! The Cavaliers did not find the problem of domestic service solved by life-ownership of servants. Colonel Fitzhugh writes Mr. John Buckner in 1680: "I hope you will make an abatement for your Dumb Negro that you sold me. Had she been a new Negro, I must have blamed my fate, not you; but one that you had two years, I must conclude you knew her qualities, which is _bad at work, worse at talking_. You took advantage of the softness of my messenger to quit your hands of her." In spite of this unsuccessful experiment, we find him two years later making another venture in human live-stock, by ordering John Withers to buy "Mr. Walton's Boy for £20, or £54 with him and 2 others, unlesse you can make a better bargain." Poor Colonel Fitzhugh might well be discouraged, for he had tried every kind of servant, black and white, bond and free, without satisfactory results. "I would have you," he writes in despair to a sea captain in England, "bring me in a good housewife. I do not intend or mean to be brought in, as the ordinary servants are, but to pay her passage and agree to give her fifty shillings or three pounds a year during the space of five years, upon which terms, I suppose, good servants may be had, because they have their passage clear, and as much money as they can have there. _I would have a good one or none._ I look upon the generality of wenches you bring in as not worth keeping."