INDIGO* 325 



Js found obstinately pursuing the same track, without 

 deviation or improvement, making no attempt to 

 discover the cause, or arrest the progress, of those 

 ravages so often fatal to his whole crop, but which 

 the superior intelligence of skilful European agricul- 

 turists might perhaps successfully combat. 



The uncertainty of this production, though in the 

 present day more known and felt in the East, was 

 equally great in the West Indies during the time 

 when its cultivation formed there an object of im- 

 portance. In a statement of the comparative advan- 

 tages of different crops, Mr. Edwards, after dwelling 

 on the extreme productiveness of indigo, thus con- 

 tinues : '* Unhappily, however, the golden hopes 

 which speculations like these have raised in the 

 minds of thousands have vanished on actual experi- 

 ment like visions of the morning. I think I have 

 myself, in the course of eighteen years in the West 

 Indies, known at least twenty persons commence 

 indigo planters, not one of whom has left a trace by 

 which I can now point out where his plantation was 

 situated, except perhaps the remains of a ruined cis- 

 tern covered by weeds and defiled by reptiles. Many 

 of them too were men of knowledge, foresight, and 

 property. That they failed is certain, but of the 

 causes of their failure I confess I can give no satis- 

 factory account. I was told that disappointment trod 

 close at their heels at every step. At one time the 

 fermentation was too long continued, at another the 

 liquor was drawn off too soon. Now the pulp was 

 not duly granulated, and now it was worked too 

 much. To these inconveniences, for which practice 

 would doubtless have found a remedy, were added 

 others of much greater magnitude, the mortality of 

 the negroes from the vapour of the fermented liquor, 

 the failure of the seasons, and the ravages of the 

 worm. These or some of these evils drove them at 



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