Their wants are, generally speaking, few and easily satisfied; and their soil, though barren, yields a sufficiency of those common necessaries of life which are required in tropical climates. They have not, unfortunately, any common language to knit them together in society, hence must their intercourse with each other be extremely limited; their curiosity is not awakened by the contemplation of new and remote objects, they know few artificial necessities to induce the visits of strangers to supply them, and hence, except in war, they seldom pass the boundaries of the hut that shelters, and the field of rice or corn that feeds them. Nor are these the only disadvantages, or, more properly speaking, difficulties to their general improvement. It is a melancholy truth, that some of the white men who were in the first instances sent ostensibly to instruct them, were often actuated by different motives to suffer the lust of interest and power to tempt them from the useful discharge of the functions entrusted to them;—they, too, often meet cunning by cunning, treachery by treachery, and rapine by rapine: and while they thus conducted themselves,—why expect the Negro to view them in the light of friends and Christian regenerators? The Negro absurdly thinks the white man his enemy, and in how many thousand instances has not the white man realised this absurdity into positive and melancholy fact? The white inculcates principles whose practice he violates, and then he turns round and smiles at the incredulity, or affectedly weeps over the folly of those who will not yield to the happy influence which, forsooth! he was destined to spread amongst them. That this has been too much the case cannot be denied. That a different conduct now prevails, I can with pleasure assert, and I hope for the sake of mankind, that it may improve in proportion as the field of our enquiries shall enlarge. This misconduct was the beginning of all the evil which followed, and those erroneous views destroyed the best intentioned labours. We as Englishmen should consider that the prejudices of ages cannot be eradicated in an hour, nor the light of truth communicated by instruction at the mere will of man. To benefit our fellow creatures, we must expend time, patience, money, resources and sedulous instruction, because we know that cupidity, bigotry, and revenge, and all the bad passions which spring from ignorance, are not to be destroyed by any other effectual means. Many incidents have been stated in the course of my narrative, which justify these remarks, exclusive of those more prominent instances which are to appear in the sequel.