chap, iv.] WEST INDIES. 283 
ferecl more than ourselves; but not thinking him¬ 
self at liberty to permit the importation of provi¬ 
sions in American vessels, the productions of the 
country were soon exhausted, and the usual attend¬ 
ants of scanty and unwholesome diet, dropsies 
and epidemic dysenteries, were again dreadfully pre¬ 
valent in the spring and summer of 1786, and pro¬ 
ved fatal to great numbers of the negroes in all 
parts of the country. 
“ On the 20th of October in that year happened 
the fifth dreadful hurricane, which again laid waste 
the leeward parishes, and completed the tragedy. 
We decline to enlarge on the consequences which 
followed, lest we may appear to exaggerate ; but 
having endeavoured to compute, with as much ac¬ 
curacy as the subject will admit, the number of our 
slaves whose destruction may be fairly attributed to 
these repeated calamities and the unfortunate mea¬ 
sure of interdicting foreign supplies, and for this 
purpose compared the imports and returns of ne¬ 
groes for the last seven years, with those of seven 
years preceding, we hesitate not, after every allow¬ 
ance for adventitious causes, to fix the whole loss 
at fifteen thousand : This number we firmly 
BELIEVE TO HAVE PERISHED OF FAMINE, OR 
OF DISEASES CONTRACTED BY SCANTY AND 
UNWHOLESOME DIET, BETWEEN THE LATTER 
END OF 1780, AND THE BEGINNING OF 1787.” 
Such (without including the loss of negroes in 
the other islands, and the consequent diminution in 
