The negro slaves, tradesmen, are chiefly carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, or masons; some of whom make tolerably good workmen, if under proper directions; but they are not very skilful in laying out work themselves, or contriving. They in general live very comfortable, are well treated, and many of them make tolerable sums of money by jobs they do for others in their own leisure hours. The negro porters are in general a very idle, insolent and thievish set of people, and are often guilty of much imposition, especially to strangers on their arrival in the islands. They are commonly the stoutest and worst disposed negros belonging to white people, or to free people of colour in the towns, and pay their owners a certain sum daily; but many of them will game away the whole of their earnings, or spend it in liquor, to the great injury of their masters. The characters of negros are not so various as one would imagine they would be, from the difference of the country they are brought from, to the West Indies; as very few of them on their arrival in the islands have the least appearance of having been civilized, or possessed of any endowments but such as are merely natural. For the generality of them, on their first introduction, appear as wild as the brute beasts; are indolent and stupid to a degree, so that they hardly know the use of the most common utensil of husbandry, much less the methods of cultivating the ground. Every thing appears to them as entirely new, as to the infant just come to a moderate degree of vision; but, at the same time, they seem to be so very unconcerned at the sight of the most novel objects, that the bare recollection is not a moment in their minds. They appear insensible to every thing but hunger and thirst, which however, to satisfy, they have no more nicety than a hog; as any thing, either raw or dressed, is equally acceptable when given to them. This stupidity of theirs continues a length of time after their arrival in the islands, before most of them can be brought to any degree of proper comprehension; and with many of them, it is entirely unconquerable. The Creole negros, that is to say, those who are born in the West Indies, having been brought up among white people, and paid some attention to from their infancy, lose much of that uncommon stupidity so conspicuous in their new negro parents; and are in general tolerably sensible, sharp, and sagacious. But there is actually something so very unaccountable in the genius of all negros, so very different from that of white people in general, that there is not to be produced an instance in the West Indies, of any of them ever arriving to any degree of perfection in the liberal arts or sciences, notwithstanding the greatest pains taken with them; and the only thing they are remarkable for attaining to any degree of perfection, is Musick.