Page:The Under-Ground Railroad.djvu/155

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135

ton, is a straggling town of about 2500 inhabitants, 200 or 250 will include the entire coloured population. I am not so favourably impressed with the prosperity of the coloured people here. Their morals, I am sorry to say, are much lower than in most towns and settlements, more drunkenness than we usually see. There are among them a few good Christians,—pious, devoted persons; but a kind of goodness without intelligence. One man owns two hacks and four horses. It seems the community has been left without competent teachers to instruct the people; the consequence is, they have not done as well as we could desire, I may add, that several of them own property, and are in comfortable circumstances; but, upon the whole, they are far behind the mass of their brethren.

London is a town still further west, on the Great Western Railway, it has a population of 12,000, of which 500 are coloured people. What I have said of them in Toronto and Hamilton, will apply to their brethren here. They are rapidly advancing in this place in general refinement and respectability, nearly all seem engaged in some sort of useful employment. This is the Missionary field of the Colonial Church and School Society. They have done and are still doing a great deal to promote the interest and elevation of this people. I am confident God has blest the various agencies, and means employed