- Knit with the Graces, tun’d his silvan pipe,
- While mute Attention hush’d each charmed rill;
- Not purple Enna,1 whose irriguous lap,
their produce cannot be refined to the best advantage, without a mixture of St. Kitts’ muscovado. In the barren part of the island, which runs out towards Nevis, are several ponds, which in dry weather crystallize into good salt; and below Mount Misery is a small Solfaterre and collection of fresh water, where fugitive Negroes often take shelter, and escape their pursuers.2 Not far below is a large plain which affords good pasture, water, and wood; and, if the approaches thereto were fortified, which might be done at a moderate expence, it would be rendered inaccessible. The English, repulsing the few natives and Spaniards, who opposed them, began to plant tobacco here A.D. 1623. Two years after, the French landed in St. Christopher on the same day that the English-settlers received a considerable reinforcement from their mother-country; and, the chiefs of both nations, being men of sound policy, entered into an agreement to divide the island between them: the French retaining both extremities, and the English possessing themselves of the middle parts of the island. Some time after both nations erected sugar-works, but there were more tobacco, indigo, coffee, and cotton-plantations, than Sugar ones, as these require a much greater fund to carry them on, than those other.3 All the planters, however, lived easy in their circumstances; for, though the Spaniards, who could not bear to be spectators of their thriving condition, did repossess themselves of the island, yet they were soon obliged to retire, and the colony succeeded better than ever. One reason for this was, that it had been agreed between the two nations, that they should here remain neutral whatever wars their mother-countries might wage against each other in Europe. This was a wise regulation for an infant settlement; but, when King James abdicated the British throne,4 the French suddenly rose, and drove out the unprepared English by force of arms. The French colonists of St. Christopher had soon reason, however, to repent their impolitic breach of faith; for the expelled planters, being assisted by their countrymen from the neighbouring isles, and supported by a formidable fleet, soon recovered, not only their lost plantations, but obliged the French totally to abandon the island. After the treaty of Ryswick,5 indeed, some few of those among them, who had not obtained settlements in Martinico6 and Hispaniola, returned to St. Christopher: but the war of partition soon after breaking out, they were finally expelled, and the whole island was ceded in Sovereignty to the crown of Great Britain, by the treaty of Utrecht.7 Since that time, St. Christopher has gradually improved, and it is now at the height of perfection. The Indian name of St. Christopher is Liamuiga, or the Fertile Island.
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City and province in central Sicily. ↩︎
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Grainger refers here to enslaved persons running away from plantations and taking advantage of the rough terrain near Mt. Liamuiga to evade re-capture. A solfaterre is a volcano. ↩︎
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Tobacco, indigo, coffee, and cotton were major agricultural commodities in the eighteenth-century Caribbean. Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is native to the Americas. Indigo (genus Indigofera) is found in tropical regions throughout the world. Various species are used in the production of blue dye. Commercial cotton (genus Gossypium) is produced from several different species, some of which are native to the Old World and others of which are native to the New World. Coffee is made from the roasted seeds of the genus Coffea. Coffea arabica, the most widely cultivated species, is native to northeast tropical Africa. ↩︎
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King James was King James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland (1633–1701). Son of Charles I, James II became king of England after the death of his brother, Charles II. He was the last Roman Catholic king of England and abdicated in 1688 during the Glorious Revolution. ↩︎
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Also Treaty of Rijswijk, signed in 1697 and named after the Dutch city in which it was signed. The treaty ended the Nine Years’ War (1689-1697), in which Louis XIV’s France faced a grand coalition of England, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch, and Spain. The treaty confirmed the effective disappearance of Spain as a maritime and continental power. ↩︎
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Martinico. Spanish name for the island of Martinique, the northernmost of the Windward Islands. Now an overseas department of France. ↩︎
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The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) was part of the general settlement ending the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714). The treaty confirmed Philip V as King of Spain but required him to abandon his claim to the French throne. Additional provisions included the Spanish forfeiture of Gibraltar and Minorca to the British and the French forfeiture of claims to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Rupert’s Land in northern Canada. The French also had to cede the formerly partitioned St. Kitts entirely to the British. The British received the Asiento as well, a monopoly contract to supply the Spanish Americas with enslaved Africans. ↩︎