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Blackwater rivers. The former is paid $15.00 per month more than any other Pilot on the river, because of his superior ability. The Engineer on the boat run by this Pilot is a Freedman and he is said to be one of the best, if not the very best one in the State. The colored mechanics of the State, when employed, command and receive the usual wages paid others of the same calling, and although it is a fact that in the days of slaving no colored man, in North Carolina, was permitted to act as master workman upon a job, but must always work as the subordinate of a white man, according to the law of the State, yet the freed mechanics are now constant by taking work upon their own responsibility, and doing it to the satisfaction of their employers. One of the most interesting sights which it was my good fortune to witness, while in the State, was the building of a steamboat by a colored shipbuilder, with his gang of colored workmen on Cape Fear River.

I find no idleness, no vagrancy among any of the Freedmen. Those among them, who are not mechanics, find employment, as far as possible, in hotels, upon steamboats, upon railroads, upon railroad cars, upon farms, in private families and wherever even a small remuneration is promised for labor. There