"Whereas there is a common course practiced among Englishmen, to buy negroes to that end that they may have them for service or as slaves forever; for the the preventing of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that no black mankind or white being, shall be forced by covenant, bond or otherwise, to serve any man or his assigns longer than ten years, or until they come to be twenty-four years of age, if they be taken in under fourteen, from the time of their coming within the liberties of this Colony--at the end or term of ten years to set them free as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them go free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end they may be enslaved to others for a longer time, he or they shall forfeit to the Colony forty pounds." The court that enacted this law was composed as follows: John Smith, President; Thomas Olney, General Assistant, from Providence; Samuel Gorton from Warwick; John Green, General Recorder; Randal Holden, Treasurer; Hugh Bewett, General Sergeant. _The Friend_, April, 1831. A NEGRO PIONEER IN THE WEST Mr. Monroe N. Work invites attention to the fact that in an issue of December 23d, 1920, the _Advertiser Journal_ of Kent, Washington, ran the following story: "The best and largest yield of wheat ever exhibited," grown in western Washington. It sounds like a real estate folder. And yet at the World's Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876, W. O. Bush, son of George Bush, one of the first settlers on Puget Sound, won the gold premium for wheat he grew on Bush Prairie, just south of Olympia; to this day the wheat is preserved in the Smithsonian Institute. This record of great wheat yield is a part of the history of one of the families that came to the Northwest and had that quality that made them successful here. George Bush was the first colored man to come to this part of the country, the forerunner of the large number of useful citizens of his race who have followed with the increasing population. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1814, and with his wife from Tennessee started west in 1844. Before coming west with his family, Bush had made a trip to this country with a number of companions, coming north along the coast from the Mexican border and suffering from the innumerable hardships of the trail, hunger and Indians. He must have liked the prospects, for it was only a short time later that we find him again headed in this direction in company with a number of other hardy pioneers.