576 HISTORY 



£195,584, in 1862, to £1,007,755, and in 1863 to £3,368,567.'"° The profits of a 

 successful venture were only enhanced as the Union troops drew their lines 

 more closely on the Confederacy and other sources of supply were cut off. 

 Prices of necessaries became very dear in parts of the South. Trading through 

 the blockade reached its highest point about the close of the year 1864. The 

 imports at Nassau for that year amounted to £5,346,112, the exports to £4,672,- 

 398. But in March, 1865, the American consul at that place reported that 

 blockade-running had become a thing of the past. This sudden decline was 

 doubtless due to the reopening of the southern ports after Sherman's march to 

 the sea. 



While this commerce was so flourishing, Nassau reached the high tide of 

 her prosperity. Mercantile and professional pursuits made fortunes rapidly; 

 but persons with fixed salaries suffered on account of the great rise in the prices 

 of necessaries. The value of landed property at Nassau was increased to 300 

 and 400 per cent. Wharf space on the harbor front became so valuable that 

 the harbor along the shoreline ^las filled in and several new blocks thus added 

 to the city. Great was the profit at the expense of the belligerents. These 

 were the halcyon days of the Bahamas, and the inhabitants still think of the 

 days of the war as the " good old times " of prosperity and plenty. 



The people were exultant over their good fortune. In 1863, Governor 

 Bayley addressed the Assembly, dwelling on this new commerce as a principal 

 theme in his speech. He congratulated the people that under British protec- 

 tion they could have commercial relations with either belligerent. On the 

 other hand he lamented that this commerce was exposed to frequent losses at 

 the hands of the naval power predominant in the neighboring waters. He fur- 

 ther lamented that American publicists were insisting that the conduct of the 

 people of the Bahamas was not consistent with relations of friendship and 

 amity with the United States. He gloried in this prosperity, although it was at 

 the expense of a nation struggling for self-preservation. In 1864 the Governor 

 went still further in the same tone, but his speeches to the legislature did not 

 meet with approval at London. The Duke of Newcastle, of the Colonial De- 

 partment, refused to approve of the Governor's reference to the practice of 



°™ A slight difCerence appears between the report from which these figures are 

 taken and that given by Northcroft in his "Sketches of Summerland " (p. 303), 

 in the item of exports for the year 1860. The figures here given are taken from 

 the reports of Governor Rawson on the state of the colony for the years 1862 and 

 1863, as printed in the Session Papers of Parliament for 1864, vol. 40, p. 11, and 

 1865, vol. 37, p. 16. 



