52 Of Emigration. Bk. iii. 



uncommon size and hardness of the trees, a most 

 disheartening scantiness and poverty in their first 

 crops, and a slow and yjrecarious supply of pro- 

 visions from England.* 



The attempt of the French in 1663, to form at 

 once a powerful colony in Guiana, was attended 

 with the most disastrous consequences. Twelve 

 thousand men were landed in the rainy season, 

 and placed under tents and miserable sheds. In 

 this situation, inactive, weary of existence, and in 

 want of all necessaries; exposed to contagious 

 distempers, which are always occasioned by bad 

 provisions, and to all the irregularities which idle- 

 ness produces among the lower classes of society, 

 almost the whole of them ended their lives in all 

 the horrors of despair. The attempt was com- 

 pletely abortive. Two thousand men, whose robust 

 constitutions had enabled them to resist the incle- 

 mency of the climate, and the miseries to which 

 they had been exposed, were brought back to 

 France; and the 26,000,000 of livres, which had 

 been expended in the expedition, were totally 

 lost.t 



In the late settlements at Port Jackson in New 

 Holland, a melancholy and affecting picture is 

 drawn by Collins of the extreme hardships, with 

 which, for some years, the infant colony had to 

 struggle, before the produce was equal to its sup- 



* Burke's Americaj vol. ii. p. 85. 



t Raynal, Hist, des Indes, torn. vii. liv. xiii. p. 43. 10 vols 

 8vo. 1795. 



