328 



A. D. 1794. 



It was thought that this brief notice of .the ftate of the manufuct'jres 

 and commerce of a great people, who were formerly conneded with us 

 as fellow-fubjedls, and are ftill conneded with us by the ties of kindred, 

 friendfhip, and commerce, would not be unacceptable. It appears from 

 it, that the affairs of the United ftates, unencumbered with any diftant 

 or detached territories, little expofed to the danger of being engaged in 

 any ferious quarrel with the great powers of Europe, and confequently 

 exempted from the burthen of heavy naval and military eftablifhments, 

 are in a very flourifliing condition, and in a progreiTive ftate of advancing 

 profperity. 



The French had lately introduced three new fpecies of the fugar- 

 cane in Martinique and their other Weft-India colonies ; one from the 

 Ifland of Bourbon, faid to have been brought thither from the coaft of 

 Malabar ; another from Otaheitc ; and a third from Batavia. The 

 Bourbon and Otaheite canes are nearly of the fame nature : they are 

 much larger than the old Weft-India cane, fome of the joints of them 

 meafuring nine inches in length, and fix in circumference *. Some of 

 them have weighed feven pounds when trimmed fit for grinding, being 

 above two pounds heavier than the largeft picked canes of the old kind. 

 They ripen fooner, being fit for cutting in ten months : and their juice 

 alfo granulates (or becomes fugar) fooner, and throws up lefs fcum in 

 the boiling, than that of the old canes. They alfo refift the injuries of 

 excefllve dry weather, and the ravages of a deftrudive infect, called the 

 borer, fo much better than the others, that Mr. Pinnel, a confiderable 

 planter in the French ifland of Guadaloupe, obtained no lefs than three 

 hogilieads of fugar from half an acre of the Bourbon cane, which he 

 had planted as an experiment in the year 1792, when his other canes 

 were fo much damaged by extraordinary drought and the borer, as to 

 be imfit for making fugar. 



The firft trial of the new canes in any Britifli colony was made in 

 the year 1793 by a gentleman of Montferrat, to whom Mr. Pinnel 

 gave fome of his plants. But the fate of war having now fubjeded moft 

 of the French iflands to the dominion of Great Britain, they were this 

 year tranfplanted to Antigua by Admiral Laforey, a proprietor of fome 

 plantations in that ifland, who eftimated the produce of them at 3,500 

 pounds of fugar from an acre f , in a feafon, wherein the dry weather 

 and the borer were particularly fatal to the other canes. 



After fuch proofs of their fuperiority, the new canes, generally un- 



* Captain Bligh hi his account of his voyage produftive. In April 1798 two acres and a half 



to the South fea [/>. 85] f.;ys, ' Some very fine of the Bourbon canes in St. Thomas in the Vale, 



' fugar-cane was brought to me ; each of the one of the moft exhauftcd parilhes in Jamaica, 



' pieces was fix inches round.' Sir Jofeph Banks yielded near eight hogfheads, of above fixteen 



has fome dried fpecimens of thofe canes, brought hundredweight each, of clear and ftrong-grained 



home by Captain Bligh in one of his voyages for fugar ; which gives above 5,700 pounds for the 



the bread-fruit tree. produce of each acre. 



f They afterwards really turned out much more 



