ken if the coloured people were to be raised from the low
condition into which slavery had reduced them. People of the shrewder
sort clearly saw that great results might be expected from education and
industrial training. Although the prevailing ignorance was of the
densest kind, all were most anxious to learn. Wherever a camp appeared
it was certain that schools would speedily follow; and in what must
have appeared an incredibly short space of time no less than 250 schools
were established in that Mississippi Valley alone. The contemporary
anonymous writer in the _Leisure Hour_ who has already been quoted, and
who appears to have been thoroughly well acquainted with the negroes'
characteristics and condition in their transition state, adds this
word-picture of the general outlook at the time to which reference is
being made:--

"They are most anxious to be taught, and most docile under direction.
Their ignorance previously was universal and extreme. It is no wonder
that their religious camp-meetings had become associated with the most
grotesque ideas and narrations. It is no wonder that their phraseology
was a caricature of civilised language. For how could they be expected
to manifest intelligence without any education? So deplorably destitute
of instruction were they that very few even of their preachers could
read the simplest words. Old men amongst them who had preached the
Gospel to their black congregations for upwards of forty years, were
found totally ignorant of the alphabet, and, of course, had never read a
verse of Scripture. How could the Sermons, the prayers and the religious
ideas of such 'pastors' be other than grievously deficient?"

When the depressed conditions under which these coloured people had
previously lived were duly taken into account, the most wonderful thing
of all was seen in the rapid strides they made in the betterment of
their temporal condition or outward surroundings. The days no longer
passed in dull or even painful monotony. Labour, which had hitherto been
to them hard bondage, not easy to bear, had become a privilege and a
pleasure. Having survived the too exaggerated notions of what the new
era might mean for them, and the inevitable reaction of disappointment
which followed, they could now take stock of life and realise that they
had been enormous gainers by at last coming into that inheritance for
which their forefathers had so earnestly longed and prayed. The
responsibilities,