Reflecting Upon The Reported Fertility Of The Soil, And The Excellence Of The Climate Of Madeira, And Comparing Both With

The judicious foresight of a philosopher, politician, and naturalist, in reference to the most valuable productions of similar climates and

Soils, he wisely conceived, and successfully executed the idea of introducing the cultivation of sugar and wines into this new colony; For these purposes, Portugal would readily supply him with vines; and with people conversant in their management: But he had to procure sugar canes, and persons experienced in their cultivation, and in the process of manufacturing sugar from their juice, from the island of Sicily, into which that article of culture had been introduced by the Arabs.

So great was the success of this new subject of industry in Madeira, that the fifth part of the produce of one district only, little more than nine miles in circumference, which proportion the prince reserved as the patrimony of his military order, amounted, in some years, to 60,000 arobas of twenty-five pounds each; giving the entire acknowledged produce of one district only, of the island at 7,500,000 pounds, or 2350 tons. This, at the modern price of eightpence a-pound, amounts to the enormous sum of L. 250,000 value of merchantable produce, from a district which could not contain above 5760 English acres; or above the value of L. 43 of average yearly value from every acre of that district. This astonishingly valuable produce was in the infancy of the sugar trade, when that bland and wholesome condiment was still an article of luxury, and not as now almost an indispensable necessary, even in the lowest cottages of modern Europe. The sugars of Madeira were long famous; but after the establishment of the sugar plantations in Brazil, and the destructive ravages of a worm which infested the sugar canes of Madeira, that article, of cultivation had to be abandoned, and the principal attention of the islanders was transferred to the grape, which still continues to supply Europe, America, and the East Indies with the justly celebrated Madeira wine.

At the same time with the grant of Madeira to Zarco and Vaz, Perestrello received a donation of the island of Puerto Santo, on condition of colonizing it and bringing it into culture. But so great was the multitude of rabbits, all said to have been produced from one doe transmitted in a pregnant state from Portugal, that cultivation was attended with peculiar difficulties occasioned by their ravages; insomuch, that in one islet only, 3000 are reported to have been killed at one time.

SECTION III.

_Prosecution of Discovery in Africa, to Cape Branco_.

Partly diverted from the original object of prosecuting discoveries along the African coast, by the attentions requisite for forming this first establishment of modern colonization, but chiefly owing to the extreme difficulties of the navigation in the infancy of that art, fifteen years were passed from the first discovery of Cape Bojador before that formidable obstacle could be surmounted.

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