49 
chap, ii.] WEST INDIES. 
Under the various revolutions and calamities 
which had thus attended this unfortunate planta¬ 
tion, it may well be imagined, that cultivation had 
made but little progress in it; but although order 
and submission were at length introduced by the 
establishment of the royal authority, various causes 
concurred to keep the colony in a state of poverty 
and depression for many years afterwards. Even 
so late as 1700, if Raynal has been rightly inform¬ 
ed, the island contained no more than 251 whites 
and 525 blacks; who were employed on three plan¬ 
tations of sugar, and fifty-two of indigo. 
After the peace of Utrecht, the government of 
France began to turn its attention towards her 
West Indian possessions. Grenada however, for 
many years, partook less of its care than the rest. 
It had no constant correspondence with the mother 
country: some oppressive regulations of the far- 
mers-general ruined the cultivation of one of its 
staples, tobacco: and the planters had not the 
means of obtaining a supply of negroes from Afri¬ 
ca, sufficient for the purpose of cultivating sugar to 
any extent. These inconveniencies led them into 
a smuggling intercourse with the Dutch: a re¬ 
source which at length changed their circumstances 
for the better; increased their numbers, and occasi¬ 
oned a great part of the country to be settled, in¬ 
somuch that when, in the year 1762, the fortune 
of war made the English masters of this and the 
rest of the French Charaibean islands, Grenada and 
the Grenadines are said to have vielded annually, 
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Vol. II. 
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