History counts the fitful pulses of this bluest blood of Europe,
and hesitates to declare that such emigrants misrepresented
the mother-country.
But after the middle of the sixteenth century, the inhabitants were
pillaged by the public enemies of the mother-country, and by private
adventurers of all lands. And yet, in 1587, the year after Drake's
expedition, their fleet carried home 48 quintals of cassia, 50 of
sarsaparilla, 134 of logwood, 893 chests of sugar, each weighing 200
pounds, and 350,444 hides of every kind. There is no account of
indigo, and the cultivation of cotton had not commenced. Coffee was
first introduced at Martinique during the reign of Louis XIV., who
died in 1715. Its cultivation was not commenced in Jamaica till
1725.[24]
The negroes whom Hawkins procured on his first voyage to Africa were
carried by him to San Domingo. This was in 1563, the date of England's
first venture in the slave-trade. The English had sent vessels to the
African coast as early as 1551, on private account, for gold and
ivory; but as they had no West-Indian colony, and the trade in slaves
was a monopoly, they had no object to increase the risks of a voyage
which infringed upon the Portuguese right to Africa by carrying
negroes away.
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