The American Plantations, As They Were Called, Increased So Rapidly In
Commerce That, According To The Last Author Referred To,
They did, even in
the year 1670, employ nearly two-thirds of all our English shipping, "and
therefore gave constant
Sustenance, it may be, to 200,000 persons here at
home." At this period New England seems to have directed its chief
attention and industry to the cod and mackerel fisheries, which had
increased their ships and seamen so much as to excite the jealousy of Sir
Josiah Child, who, however, admits that what that colony took from England
amounted to ten times more than what England took from it. The Newfoundland
fishery, he says, had declined from 250 ships in 1605, to eighty in 1670:
this he ascribes to the practice of eating fish alone on fast days, not
being so strictly kept by the Catholics as formerly. From Carolina, during
the seventeenth century, England obtained vast quantities of naval stores,
staves, lumber, hemp, flax, and Indian corn. About the end of this century,
or at the very commencement of the next, the culture of rice was introduced
by the accident of a vessel from Madagascar happening to put into Carolina,
which had a little rice left; this the captain gave to a gentleman, who
sowed it.
The colony of Virginia seems to have flourished at an earlier period than
any of the other English colonies. In the year 1618, considerable
quantities of tobacco were raised there; and it appears, by proclamations
of James I. and Charles I., that no tobacco was allowed to be imported into
England, but what came from Virginia or the Bermudas.
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