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are so low, that, in the constant need of food it is not to be wondered that they betake themselves from ill-paid labor to the famous fishing grounds about New Point and Piankitank.  In Gloucester Co. the freedmen are very quiet, working usually for their old masters, and make few complaints.  I think that owing to less temptation to quit field labor, they are more steadily employed than those in Matthews Co.

In all my district there is great depression among all classes.  No language can express too strongly the need of a settled order of things; no humanity could be greater than to hasten the adoption of a final organic law that should establish fixed relations which are the necessary basis of all economical operations.

I regret to report a bad state of things in and about Hampton.  Theft is very frequent, and is practised with impunity.  In a thickly settled community of paupers like this, the aggregate pressure upon the honesty of the people must be immense, and it is to be expected that some will yield to temptation, if not to absolute necessity.