nifested no desire of transferring to them the purchase,
and even refused an advance of ten pounds on his bargain.

"4. Persons of the highest grade of liberated Africans
occupy comfortable two story stone houses, enclosed all
round with spacious piazzas. These houses are their own
property and are built from the proceeds of their own
industry. In several of them are to be seen mahogany chairs,
tables, sofas, and four-post bedsteads, pier-glasses,
floor-cloths, and other articles indicative of domestic
comfort and accumulating wealth.

"Persons of this grade, like those last described, are
almost wholly engaged in mercantile pursuits. Their
transactions, however, are of greater magnitude and value,
and their business is carried on with an external appearance
of respectability commensurate with then superior pecuniary
means: thus, instead of exposing their wares for sale in
booths or stalls by the wayside, they are to be found in
neatly fitted-up shops on the ground-floors of their stone
dwelling houses.

"Many individual members of this grade have realized very
considerable sums of money,--sums which, to a person not
cognizant of the fact, would appear to be incredible. From
the studied manner in which individuals conceal their
pecuniary circumstances from the world, it is difficult to
obtain a correct knowledge of the wealth of the class
generally. The devices to which they have recourse in
conducting a bargain are often exceedingly ingenious; and to
be reputed rich might materially interfere with their
success on such occasions. There is nothing more common than
to hear a plea of poverty set up and most pertinaciously
urged, in extenuation of the terms of a purchase, by persons
whose outward condition, comfortable well-furnished houses,
and large mercantile credits, indicate any thing but
poverty.

"There are circumstances, however, the knowledge of which
they cannot conceal, and which go far to exhibit pretty
clearly the actual state of matters: such as, _First_, the
facility with which they raise large sums of cash prompt' at
public auctions. _Second_, the winding up of the estates of
deceased persons. (Peter Newland, a liberated African, died
a short time before I left the colony: and his estate
realized,