127 
©map. hi.] WEST INDIES. 
that on an average one year with another, those 
fifty plantations do not produce annually more than 
three thousand hogsheads of sugar. This is cer¬ 
tainly a very small quantity of that article for such 
an extensive island, or even for the number of su¬ 
gar plantations at present under cultivation, allow¬ 
ing only one hundred acres of canes to each. 
Coffee seems to answer better than sugar, there 
being somewhat more than two hundred coffee 
plantations in Dominica, which in favourable years 
have produced three millions of pounds weight. 
A small part of the lands are also applied to the 
cultivation of cacao, indigo, and ginger; but I be¬ 
lieve that most of these articles, as well as of the 
cotton, which are comprehended in the exports, 
have hitherto been obtained from the dominions of 
foreign states in South America, and imported in¬ 
to this island under the free-port law. 
The number of white inhabitants, of all descrip¬ 
tions and ages, appears, by the last returns to go¬ 
vernment, in 1788, to be 1,236; of free negroes, 
&c. 445; and of slaves 14,967. There are also, 
from twenty to thirty families of the ancient na¬ 
tives, or Charaibes, properly so called. They are 
a very quiet inoffensive people, speak a language 
of their own, and a little French, but none of them 
understand English.* 
* A late writer gives the following account of these people; u They 
are of a clear copper colour, have long, sleek black hair: their per- 
