125 



West Indies*. The cotton of the valleys of 

 Aragua is of a fine quality, being- inferior only 

 to that of Brazil ; for it is preferred to that of 

 Carthagena, St. Domingo, and the Caribbee 

 islands. The cultivation of cotton extends on 

 one side of the lake from Maracay to Valencia ; 

 and on the other, from Guayca to Guigue. The 

 large plantations yield from sixty to seventy 

 thousand pounds a year. When we reflect, that 

 in the United States, consequently beyond the 

 tropics, in a variable climate, often unfavourable 

 to this produce, the exportation of indigenous 

 cotton rose in eignteen years, from 1797 to 

 1815, from 1,200,000 pounds to 83,000,000, 

 it is difficult to form an idea of the immense 

 extent, which this branch of commerce -J- will 



* Mr. Medford, in his researches on the manufactories of 

 England, reckons, that, of 61,380,000 pounds of cotton, 

 which these manufactories consumed in 1805, there were 

 thirty-one millions from the United States ; ten millions 

 from Brazil ; and ten millions from the West Indies. This 

 last quantity was not the produce of a single year, or of the 

 islands alone. The great and little islands together produced 

 in 1812 only 5,200,000 pounds of cotton, the greater part of 

 which grew in Barbadoes, the Bahama Islands, Dominica, 

 and Grenada. The produce of the soil of the West Indies 

 must not be confounded with their exportation, which is 

 augmented by the carrying trade. Colquhoun, p. 378 ; 

 Page, torn i, p. 3. ; 



t The cotton manufactures of Great Britain alone furnish, 

 in all kinds of cotton goods (printed calicoes, stockings, &c,) 



