----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Debra Jackson/Harold Forsythe" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history" 
<[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: Mount Vernon Opens Rebuilt Slave Cabin


> Mr. Forest,
>
>    You have not considered that absence of ocean-worthy ships in your 
> calculation.  Paul Cuffee (sp?), one of the first black men, if not the 
> first, to operate such a ship took a boatload of blacks voluntarily back 
> to Africa during the second decade of the 18th century.
>    By the way, "jungle" is not a geographic descriptor.  I think you meant 
> to write rainforest.  Though the equatorial zone of Africa contains most 
> of Africa's rainforest, some of the land there is more arid;  some quite 
> arid. Think"  the different agricultural environments of Virginia or South 
> Carolina.
>    So, one African would come from a region so rainy that chiefly bananas 
> would grow there but fifty miles away sprang another African, who knew 
> chiefly millet, dry cultivated rice, etc.
>
> Harold S. Forsythe
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Basil Forest" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2007 4:06 PM
> Subject: Re: Mount Vernon Opens Rebuilt Slave Cabin
>
>
>> Material quality of life is what kept free blacks in the US rather than
>> going back to the jungle lifestyle they came from.
>>
>> Basil Forest
>>
>>
>>
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>