tp 6 HISTORY OF THE [book nr. 
The remainder was ordered to be sold for the be¬ 
nefit of the public, and 20,538 acres were ac¬ 
cordingly disposed of by auction, for the sum of 
*£’,162,854 11s, 7d. sterling.* As nearly one half 
the country was judged unfit for any profitable cul¬ 
tivation, these grants and sales comprehended all 
the lands, of any kind of value, from one end of 
the island to the other. The commissioners indeed 
were directed not to survey or dispose of any of 
the lands inhabited or claimed by the Charaibes, 
until they should receive further instructions from 
the crown; but as it' was impossible to ascertain 
how far the claims of these people extended, the 
survey alone was postponed, and the sales were 
suffered to proceed, to the amount that I have 
mentioned; no doubt being entertained by the 
several purchasers, that the British government 
would ratify the acts of its commissioners, and put 
* The Lords of the Treasury fixed a minimum, below which no 
land could be sold, which was £ 5 sterling per acre for every acre of 
cleared land, and twenty shillings for every acre in wood ; and the 
principal conditions of sale were these, “ that every purchaser should 
pay down twenty per cent, of the whole purchase money, together 
with six-pence sterling per acre, for the expense of surveying the land, 
and that the remainder of the purchase money should be secured by 
bonds ; to be paid by equal instalments in the space of five years next 
after the date of the grant. That each purchaser should keep on the 
lands so by h m purchased, one white man or two white women, for 
every hundred acres of land, as it became cleared, for the purpose of 
iultivating the same; or in default thereof, or non-payment of the re¬ 
mainder of the purchase money, the lands were to be forfeited to the 
crown.” Some of the lands sold extravagantly high, as far as fifty 
founds sterling per acre. 
