Some kind of domestic manufacturing, supplied to them as a regular business, would not only train them to habits of industry, but raise them above the level of mere field hands. To substitute an occupation which requires skill, and taxes ingenuity, for one which is coarse and plodding, is to confer a lasting benefit. In this view spinning and weaving have been encouraged. Some of the better mechanics on the island have manufactured spinning wheels for sale, doing it without the use of a lathe, and making a very good article. Many of the women can card, spin, and weave. They might succeed in willow work, if the material could be easily procured. I have had a quantity of osier willow slips planted on Roanoke, hoping to introduce, by and by, this species of industrial labor. The Friends in Philadelphia, among their many benefactions to the negroes in this District, have sent out some complete sets of shoemakers' tools, the use of which is understood by several of the freedmen on the island. The same is true of coopers' tools, and to a much larger extent; for the turpentine business, the leading pecuniary interest of North Carolina, has made them familiar with the making and mending of barrels. It is common to find colored men acquainted with splitting and shaving shingles, and not a few are constantly engaged in this business, selling them at from $3.00 to $7.00 per thousand.
The negro always builds his own house. Set him down where trees grow, give him an axe, a saw, a hammer, and twenty pounds of nails, and in a month his house is done. Let some disturbance of the times drive him from his cabin, and when he has found an eligible spot, he will erect another, and another. An old Roanoke negro told me he had built eight houses for himself on his master's plantation. His heartless lord would give him a building spot, and suffer him to live there until he had cleared the land around his dwelling, and then would drive him out, to repeat the process in a new location.
Like all people who live near navigable waters, the negroes at Roanoke are fond of boats, and know how to manage them. Some few of them are respectable boat builders. About one hundred of the most active men on the island are employed in Government work, by the Quartermaster and Commissary of the Post. Some two hundred more have been kept at work a
