[665] Dr. Howe quotes the following statement from Mr. Brush, town clerk of Malden: "A portion of them (the colored people) are pretty well behaved, and another portion not.... A great many of these colored people go and sail (are sailors) in the summer-time, and in the winter lie around, and don't do much.... We have to help a great many of them, more than any other class of people we have here. I have been clerk of the council for three years, and have had the opportunity of knowing. I think the council have given more to the colored people than to any others." See also _A North-Side View of Slavery_, p. 58. [666] _A North-Side View of Slavery_, p. 62. [667] _Ibid._, p. 94. A wide range of occupations was open to the refugees in the towns; besides the lighter kinds of service about hotels and other public houses, and the work of plastering and whitewashing, often performed by negroes, various trades were followed, such as blacksmithing, carpentering, building, painting, mill-work and other handicrafts. There were good negro mechanics in Hamilton, Chatham, Windsor, Amherstburg and other places. A few were engaged in shopkeeping, or were employed as clerks, while a still smaller number devoted themselves to teaching and preaching. As a class the fugitives in the towns, as in the country, were accounted steady and industrious, and their dwellings were said to be "generally superior to those of the Irish, or other foreign emigrants of the laboring class," and "far superior to the negro huts upon slave plantations, which many of them formerly inhabited."[668] Dr. J. Wilson Moore, of Philadelphia, visited the refugee communities in various Canadian towns, for example at Chatham, London and Wilberforce, and was favorably impressed with what he saw; with the orderly deportment of the crowds of colored people at Chatham while returning from a celebration of the anniversary of the West Indian emancipation, with the air of neatness and comfort displayed by the homes of the fugitives at London, with the advance from log cabins to brick and frame-houses made by the settlers at Wilberforce.[669] The weight of evidence supplied by Mr. Drew was unquestionably favorable to the view that the refugees were making substantial progress. He found the condition of the colored people in Toronto such as to be a proper cause of satisfaction for the philanthropist; many men in Hamilton were well-to-do; concerning those living in London he learned that some were highly intelligent and respectable, but that others wasted their time and neglected their opportunities; he noted that there was great activity among the negroes at Chatham, where they engaged in a large variety of manual pursuits; at Windsor, almost all the members of this class had comfortable homes, and some owned neat and handsome houses; at Sandwich a few were house-owners, the rest were tenants; in Amherstburg the assurance was given that the