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Hispaniola, previously to the late war, was said to have produced as much sugar alone, as all the British West India possessions united, besides immense: quantities of cotton, coffee, and indigo. The exports from the French part of the island in 1789, were 47,516,531 lb. white sugar; 93,773,300 lb. brown sugar; 76,835,219 lb. coffee;:7,004,274 lb. cotton; and 758,628 lb. in-. digo; besides molasses, spirits, tanned hides, &c. to a very considerable amount. The coffee is excellent ; each tree in a state of bearing will produce, on an average, a pound weight, and is sometimes equal to that of Mocha. Cotton of an excellent quality grows naturally, and almost without any care, in stony land, and in the crevices of the rocks. The numerous roots of indigo are the only obstacles to the feeble cultivation of the fields, where it grows spontaneously. Tobacco has here a larger leaf than in any other part of America; it grows every where, and sometimes equals that of Cuba, or the Havannah. The kernel of the cocoa nut of St. Domingo is more acidulated than that of the cocoa nut of Caracca, to which it is not inferior ; and experience proves, that chocolate made of the two cocoas has a more delicate flavour than that made of the cocoa of Caracca alone.

The commerce of Jamaica is very considerable, not only with all parts of Great Britain and Ireland, but also with Africa, America, the West India: islands, and the Spanish main. The ships annually employed are upwards of five hundred sail. Thei exports consist of sugar, rum, coffee, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cotton, mahogany, logwood, pi mento, hides, and sarsaparilla; of which the two first are the chief commodities. The total exports for the year 1787, amounted to 2,136,442l. 17s. 3d.

The population, in the same year, was estimated at three hundred and four thousand individuals, viz. thirty thousand whites, ten thousand freed negroes, fourteen thousand maroons, and two hundred and fifty thousand slaves.

Barbadoes formerly employed four hundred sail of ships in trade, and the annual exports in sugar, indigo, ginger, cotton, and citron water amounted to 350,000l. But of late years this island has de clined very much in its commercial importance which may be attributed partly to the growth of the French sugar colonies, and partly to their own establishment in the neighbouring isles. Their commerce consists of the same articles as formerly, though they deal in them to less extent.

The inhabitants of Barbadoes are reduced to three classes, viz. the masters, the white servants, and the blacks. The former consist principally of English, Scots, or Irish, but the great encouragement given by government to peopling this and other West India Islands, has induced some Dutch, French, and Portuguese to settle among them with their estates, by which, after a certain time, they acquire the rights of naturalization in Great Britain. The white servants, whether by covenant or purchase, lead more easy lives than day-labours ers in England. The manners of the white inhabitants, in general, are the same as in most polite towns and countries of Europe.

The annual produce of Guadaloupe and the adjacent islands was estimated, several years ago, at forty-six millions of pounds of sugar, twenty-one millions of coffee, three hundred and twenty thou sand pounds of cotton, and eight thousand of Cocoa; besides logwood, ginger, rum, skins, &c. Mattinico, shortly after the peace of Utrechts

became the mart for all the windward French settlements, and began to assume a very considerable degree of commercial importance. The annual exports amounted to seven hundred thousand. pounds. The connection of Martinico with the other islands entitled it to profits of commission and charges of transport, which together formed a very considerable sum. The trade with Cape Breton, Canada, and Louisiana, procured a market for sugars, coffee, molasses, and rum, in exchange for salt fish, vegetables, deals, and flour. And the clandestine trade on the coasts of Spanish America, commonly produced a profit of ninety per cent.on the value of a hundred and seventy-five. thousand pounds, sent annually to the Caraccas or neighbouring colonies. Upwards of 787,000l. were constantly circulated with great rapidity; and this is, perhaps, the only country in the world where specie has been so considerable as to make ́it a matter of indifference, whether the inhabitants dealt in gold, silver, or commodities.

This extensive trade brought into the ports of Martinico annually two hundred ships from France, and about a hundred from Guinea, Canada, Margarita, and Trinidad, besides Dutch and English muggling vessels. The war of 1744, however, put a sudden stop to this prosperity; and even after peace was restored its trade was almost ruined by the blunders of the French ministry. In 1762 it fell into the hands of the British, but was restored in the following year. For some years, the contraband trade with the Spanish coasts was almost entirely lost. The cession of Canada had precluded all hopes of opening a communication which had only been interrupted by temporary mistakes. The productions of the Grenades, St.

Vincent, and Dominica, which were now become British dominions, could no longer be brought into their harbours; and a new regulation of the mother country, which forbad her having any intercourse with Guadaloupe, left no hopes from that quarter. The present exports are sugar, coffee, cocoa, rum, cotton, cassia, and molasses; besides preserved fruits, tobacco, rope-yarn, hides, wood for dyeing, indigo, &c.

It is now proper to give some account of the cod-fishery, for which the coasts of Newfoundland have been long famous, and which is a branch of commerce of prodigious advantage to Great Britain. That part of the sea, where this fishery is chiefly carried on, is about the great bank of Newfoundland, which is a kind of submarine mountain of sand, about a hundred and fifty leagues, in length, and in some places fifty in breadth, lying on the east side of that island. To this great bank, and others near the coast, several hundred ships resort annually from various parts both of America and Europe, many of which bring away thirty or thirty-five thousand fish apiece; and, though this yearly consumption has been made for two centuries past, yet the same plenty of fish continues, without any sensible diminution, insomuch that one would think them equal in number to the grains of sand on the banks they frequent.

Here we must take some notice of the vast fecundity of fishes, which is truly wonderful, especially when we consider that these inhabitants of the waters are not only destroyed by man, their common enemy, but are perpetually devouring one another, the smaller being a prey to the greater. But notwithstanding these mutual depredations, and the snares of the fishermen, by which one

would think the watery element would in time be depopulated, we see the wise Creator has suffciently provided for their preservation by giving strength to some, to others activity and circumspection, and by multiplying them to such an astonishing degree, that their fecundity exceeds their natural impatience to devour one another, and those vast numbers that are destroyed are soon recruited by the survivors of the species. Thus codfish in particular, though so many ship-loads are every year taken about the great bank of Newfoundland, those remaining of the same tribe are always more than sufficient to furnish us with the same quantity the succeeding season.

Almost

every one has an opportunity of observing the prodigious number of eggs or spawn in some sorts of fishes; but what can the naked eye discern in comparison of what M. Leewenhoeck discovered by the assistance of his excellent microscopes! This gentleman examining the spawn of a cod-fish, took one of the hairs of his head, which through his glass appeared to be an inch broad, and placing it near the animalcula contained in the spawn, he found that at least sixty of them would lie within its diameter. This being supposed, and their bo dies being allowed to be spherical. M. Leewenhoeck computed that 216,000 of them are equal to a globe whose axis does not exceed a single hair'sbreadth. M. Petit found 342,144 eggs in the hard roe of a carp eighteen inches long; but M. Leewenhoeck only found 211,629 eggs in one of those fishes. What is most to our purpose, how ever, the last-mentioned curious enquirer into the secrets of nature tells us, that a cod contains 9,544,000 eggs. Who can help standing amazed at this prodigious fertility, undoubtedly designed

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