prevailed so far upon the vitiated humours of men, as we see it has, is of great concern to us, as well for bringing in wealth as employing multitudes of men in manufacture and navigation, which no man can dispute but to be a true national interest. One-hundred acres of land, employed in a sugar plantation, will require fifty black slaves and seven white servants to manage it. There must be six horses and eight oxen for two teams. There must be an overseer at twenty pounds per an. a doctor and farrier at twenty pounds per an. and a carter at twelve pounds per an. Twenty of the hundred acres must be set apart for pasture, provisions, and a nursery for canes to plant with. Forty of the remaining acres return a crop one year, and forty the next, and so alternatively, being constantly now to be replanted after every cutting, whereas, when the ground was first broke up, the same canes would yield two, three, or more cuttings, before they were replanted, to the wonderful ease and advantage of the first planters. There must be a wind-mill which turns great iron rollers, between which the cane is pressed. There must be a boiling-house, and in it boilers, coolers, receivers and cisterns, to which belong ladles, scummers, lamps, &c. A still-house with cisterns, stills, worms, worm-tubs, &c. A curing-house, with earthen sugar-pots, drips, and cisterns for molosses. A drying-house with necessaries. A house for the necessary fuel, employed in boiling and stilling. A house for knocking out, packing, and storing of sugar. A dwelling-house, with houses for servants and negroes. A house for cattle, besides carts, hooks, houghs, and other planting utensils, the first cost whereof will with the utmost husbandry mount to five-thousand six-hundred and twenty-five pounds, the wear and tear whereof will not be less annually than sixty pounds. A plantation of a hundred acres well stocked and provided as aforesaid, and managed to its full height, without those accidental casualties which often happen, may probably produce annually eighty hogsheads of sugar of a thousand pounds weight each hogshead, that is two-thousand pounds weight of Muscovado sugar, from each acre, and of molosses, twenty hogsheads, of seven-hundred pounds weight each hogshead. This sugar in the island may be valued at ten shillings per hun. dred, as it may be at home at twenty shillings, that being, as the price has gone since the additional duty was laid, the medium of what Muscovado sugars have yielded; all which with the prime cost as well as the molosses, rum, &c. shall be brought to a rational and equal balance, after a little more has been said of the manner of planting, making, and refining sugars. The first thing done to that ground designed for planting, is with houghs by the labour of negroes to open and loosen the surface of the earth, to prepare it for the plants. To which purpose it is first to be considered, that the Europeans, five-hundred years since, were perfect strangers to the use of it, and scarcely knew its name; but the Venetians, about that time, being the great traders in East-India spices, gums, and drugs, did, amongst other rarities, introduce sugar, which the physicians soon found to answer all the ends of honey, without many of its ill effects; so that it quickly became a commodity in mighty esteem, and. though the price was ten times more than now, yet it prevailed so fast, and the consumption of it became so great, that an ill way of making, planting, and curing of it was, about three-hundred years since, found out and practised in Greece, and some other neighbour nations, where the heat of the sun could in any degree ripen the cane. But no nation made so considerable a progress therein as the Portuguese, who having, with some success, improved the art of planting it in their African colonies and islands, did, at last, make it their main business in Brasil, becoming thereby the only nation that set the price upon it to all the parts of the world, until the Hollanders grew their rivals for power and profit in that part of America. But about fifty years since, during the war between those two nations in Brasil, a Hollander happened to arrive from thence upon our island of Barbadoes, where, though there were good sugar-canes, the English knew no other use of them than to make refreshing drink for that hot climate; intending, by planting tobacco there, to have equall. ed those of the Verina's, on which, ginger, cotton, and indico they meant to rely. But this Hollander, understanding sugar, was by one Mr. Drax and some other inhabitants there drawn in to make discovery of the art he had to make it; since which time, by the many in genious men the last civil war necessitated to seek their fortunes in that new world, there have been found out so many several sorts of mills, coppers, boilers, stoves, pots, and other tools and engines, for planting and pressing the canes, boiling-up, separating, cleansing, and purifying the juice and sugar, as well as for drawing spirits of admirable use from the molosses, that we at present exceed all the nations in the world, in the true improvement of that noble juice of the cane, which, next to that of the vine, exceeds all the liquors in the world. And, as our nation has been ever famous for meliorating inventions of all kinds, so in this we have gone so far, that, notwith standing the many discouragements, those planters do at present and have heretofore lain under, yet they apparently set the price of it in all Europe, to the kingdom's pleasure, glory, and grandure; which are all more advanced by that, than by any other commodity we deal in or produce, wool not excepted; as I doubt not but to demonstrate beyond all dispute, before I end these papers; which that I may the better do as well as shew clearly the mighty interest the nation has in preserving our West-India colonies, I will give the reader a clear and short account of a sugar, a cotton, a ginger, and indico plantation, as they are now managed in Barbadoes; and then set down a short scheme of the raising and producing tobacco, which though in itself, perhaps, not absolutely, if at all necessary to well-living, yet, having prevailed so far upon the vitiated humours of men, as we see it has, is of great concern to us, as well for bringing in wealth as employing multitudes of men in manufacture and navigation, which no man can dispute but to be a true national interest. One-hundred acres of land, employed in a sugar plantation, will require fifty black slaves and seven white servants to manage it. There must be six horses and eight oxen for two teams. There must be an overseer at twenty pounds per an. a doctor and farrier at twenty pounds per an. and a carter at twelve pounds per an. Twenty of the hundred acres must be set apart for pasture, provisions, and a nursery for canes to plant with. Forty of the remaining acres return a crop one year, and forty the next, and so alternatively, being constantly now to be replanted after every cutting, whereas, when the ground was first broke up, the same canes would yield two, three, or more cuttings, before they were replanted, to the wonderful ease and advantage of the first planters. There must be a wind-mill which turns great iron rollers, between which the cane is pressed. There must be a boiling-house, and in it boilers, coolers, receivers and cisterns, to which belong ladles, scummers, lamps, &c. A still-house with cisterns, stills, worms, worm-tubs, &c. A curing-house, with earthen sugar-pots, drips, and cisterns for molosses. A drying-house with necessaries. A house for the necessary fuel, employed in boiling and stilling. A house for knocking out, packing, and storing of sugar. A dwelling-house, with houses for servants and negroes. A house for cattle, besides carts, hooks, houghs, and other planting utensils, the first cost whereof will with the utmost husbandry mount to five-thousand six-hundred and twenty-five pounds, the wear and tear whereof will not be less annually than sixty pounds. A plantation of a hundred acres well stocked and provided as aforesaid, and managed to its full height, without those accidental casualties which often happen, may probably produce annually eighty hogsheads of sugar of a thousand pounds weight each hogshead, that is two. thousand pounds weight of Muscovado sugar, from each acre, and of molosses, twenty hogsheads, of seven-hundred pounds weight each hogshead. This sugar in the island may be valued at ten shillings per hun. dred, as it may be at home at twenty shillings, that being, as the price has gone since the additional duty was laid, the medium of what Muscovado sugars have yielded; all which with the prime cost as well as the molosses, rum, &c. shall be brought to a rational and equal balance, after a little more has been said of the manner of planting, making, and refining sugars. The first thing done to that ground designed for planting, is with houghs by the labour of negroes to open and loosen the surface of the earth, to prepare it for the plants. There are commonly two seasons, rainy and dry; the rainy begins in May or June, and ends in December or January, all which is spent in houghing, dunging, and planting the canes. The dry season is spent in cutting the canes, grinding them at the mills, boiling up the liquor and making thereof Muscovado sugar; all which must of necessity go hand in hand together, for the cane must be pressed as it is cut, or the juice dries in it; the juice must be boiled up to its proper consistency for graining as soon as pressed, or it will soure and perish; the grain must be separated speed. ily, whilst hot, for the molosses, or they will cling together, ferment and grow soure in time again, or be at best but fit for the still. But as for refining and stilling, that any season is fit for. Thus it is to be observed, that the blacks are always employed either in houghing, dunging, and planting in the wet, or in cutting, carrying, grinding, boiling, &c. in the dry seasons. There are divers ways of producing new plants, as, by cutting the root of an old plant, by laying a cane in the ground, by planting the top of a cane cut off, or by taking a shoot from a knot of a cane, many of which will have five or six, that, put in the ground, will grow; but the general way is, from those that have been set in the nurseries; for, from one root, there will proceed divers shoots, all fit for planting, as nine or ten, and sometimes twenty. The ground being prepared, holes are made therein, and in every hole dung put, and then a plant, which, in eighteen months, or there. abouts, becomes fit for cutting; so that, half a year being spent in gradually planting forty acres, six or seven acres a month will be ready successively to be cut in the proper season: So that eighty acres is the just employment for the continual labour of fifty blacks, and seven whites, in the field, and for three others for overseeing, carting, and curing the plantations. When the canes are pressed, by passing through the rollers of a wind-mill, there runs from thence a great quantity of pleasant juice, which being put into boilers, by the heat of the fire, having evaporated the flegm or watery matter to such a time as it becomes of a proper consistency, then they throw it into a mixture, consisting of some material fit to cleanse it, and prepare it for graining; all the time it is boiling, with large copper scummers, they take off the scum, which constantly rises in great quantities, until it be fit to empty into cool. ers, from whence it is again shifted into earthen pots, with holes in their bottoms, and pots, they call drips, under them, for receiving the moisture called molosses; which, in about a month's time, will be separated from that which is then called muscovado sugar, being of a pale, yellow colour; this is then knocked out of the pots, and put into casks for transportation. This sort of molosses is either boiled up again, to extract from it a sort of a duskish, pale, grey sugar, called panneels, or sent in cask for England, as the sugar is. The scum that arises, with all the washings of the boilers, coolers, pots, and other instruments employed in that business, is preserved in great cisterns, where it will ferment, and becomes fit for stilling. VOL. IX. Ee method for preserving those colonies, and this shall likewise suffice to explain the nature and produce of a sugar plantation. Thus it appears by all that has been spoken, of a sugar plantation, that the first cost, besides the labour, skill, care, and industry, amounts to five-thousand, six-hundred, twenty-five pounds; and that amounts the produce thereof, at the present usual price current of sugar not to five-hundred and forty pounds: out of which deduct the constant charge, one-hundred and fifty pounds per annum, the yearly value is three-hundred and ninety pounds, which is not 7 per cent. for his money, and yet this neither is not certain to arise. The making of sugars, and fitting them for market, being subject to many contingencies more than are set down in the history before-going; for the plants in the ground are very often subject to be devoured, wounded, and torn by ants, or undermined and destroyed at the roots by mugworms. Too much rain, or too much drought, in either season, is a certain diminution of the crop, if not a total destruction of the plants; nay, if the rains come too late, which often happens, a whole year's planting is lost. When all these mischiefs are escaped, and the canes of a considerable heighth, then are they liable to be twisted, broke, and totally spoiled by the furious hurricanes, that once in three or four years, like a fit of an ague, shake the whole islands, not only do the crops an injury, but sometimes tumble down and level their mills, work-houses, and strongest buildings; but, escaping all these, as the canes ripen, they grow more and more combustible, and are thereby subject to the malice and drunken rages of angry and desperate run-away negroes, as well as so many other accidents of fire; the fury whereof, when once got into a field of canes, is extremely quick, terrible, and scarcely to be resisted before it has destroyed the whole parcel; but when they are brought to full per. fection for cutting, and the planter's expectation as ripe as they, if unseasonable rains happen, or that no winds blow, then do they all rot and perish in the ground. The slaves and servants all stand idle, looking upon their master's decaying fortune, and at last are only employed in clearing the ground again from that useless rubbish, in which all that year's hope is perished. Not to mention after all these mischiefs, under which most planters have many times smarted, all those accidents, or storms, and pirates in bringing their commodity to market, nor, which is worst of all, their loss by breaking customers, who not only run away with all their produce, but with the freight, factoridge, and customs, which have been paid for those sugars they were trusted with, thereby subjecting the industrious planter to new and unforeseen debts and interest for them, from whence he expected the reward of all his labour. Nay, besides all has been said, some times diseases amongst slaves and cattle will in a very short time sweep away a whole year's profit, besides the constant charge of recruiting the natural decay of all living creatures. Cotton is a commodity of great value, and the planting of it of mighty advantage to the common-wealth, because we have it thereby one third price less than formerly, when we imported it from foreign |