Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/209

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BRITISH COMMERCE.
207

great quantities of provisions, lumber, and the other descriptions of produce already enumerated as forming the exports of Pennsylvania; and many of their ships were loaded directly from the sugar islands for this country. "From New England, also," continues the account, "we have the largest masts in the world for our royal navy. From thence also, as from our other continent colonies, we receive all the gold and silver that they can spare; for we give them in exchange all manner of wearing apparel, woollen, brass, and linen manufactures, East Indian goods, &c., in all, to the value of 400,000l. yearly," Of the southern colonies, Virginia and Maryland are described as together sending over annually to Great Britain 50,000 hogsheads of tobacco, one with another of the weight of 600 lbs.; the value of which, at 2½d. per pound, would be 375,000l. The shipping employed to bring home this tobacco is reckoned to amount to at least 24,000 tons, in by far the greater part English-built, and always fitted out and repaired in England—though, it seems to be implied, owned by the colonists. From these provinces also we received annually about 6000l. worth of skins and furs; they produced, moreover, excellent flax, and wool equal to the best grown in England; and there were already at least one iron-work in Virginia and another in Maryland. But, of all our American colonies, the one perhaps of the most visibly rising importance was that of Carolina, This author relates how the cultivation of rice originated in that province about the beginning of this century:—"A brigantinE from the isle of Madagascar happened to put in at Carolina, having a little seed-rice left, which the captain gave to a gentleman of the name of Woodward. From part of this he had a very good crop, but was ignorant for some years how to clean it. It was soon dispersed over the province, and by frequent experiments and observations they found out ways of producing and manufacturing it to such great perfection that it is thought to exceed any other in value. The writer of this hath seen the said captain in Carolina, where he received a handsome gratuity from the gentlemen of that country,