f mining.

It is very evident, from what has been adduced, the settlement of
Captain John Smith, being in the course of a few months, reduced to
thirty-eight, and that of Plymouth, from one hundred and one, to that of
fifty-seven in six months--it is evident, that the whites nor the
Indians were equal to the hard and almost insurmountable difficulties,
that now stood wide-spread before them.

An endless forest, the impenetrable earth; the one to be removed, and
the other to be excavated. Towns and cities to be built, and farms to be
cultivated--all these presented difficulties too arduous for the
European then here, and unknown to the Indian.

It is very evident, that at a period such as this, when the natives
themselves had fallen victims to tasks imposed upon them by their
usurpers, and the Europeans were sinking beneath the weight of climate
and hardships; when food could not be had nor the common conveniences of
life procured--when arduous duties of life were to be performed and none
capable of doing them, but those who had previously by their labors, not
only in their native country, but in the new, so proven themselves--as
the most natural consequence, the Africans were resorted to, for the
performance of every duty common to domestic life.

There were no laborers known to the colonists from Cape Cod to Cape Look
Out, than those of the African race. They entered at once into the
mines, extracting therefrom, the rich treasures that for a thousand ages
lay hidden in the earth. And from their knowledge of cultivation, the
farming interests in the North, and planting in the South, were
commenced with a prospect never dreamed of before the introduction of
this most extraordinary, hardy race of men: though pagans, yet skilled
in all the useful duties of life. Farmers, herdsmen, and laborers in
their own country, they required not to be taught to work, and how to do
it--but it was only necessary to tell them to go to work, and they at
once knew what to do, and how it should be done.

It is notorious, that in the planting States, the blacks themselves are
the only skillful cultivators--the proprietor knowing little or nothing
about the art, save that which he learns from the African husbandman,
while his ignorant white overseer, who is merely there to see that the
work is attended to, knows a great deal less. Tobacco, cotton, rice,
hemp, indigo, the improvement in Indian corn, and many other important
products, are a