Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

120

  • The large, black, female, moulting crab excel? [610]
  • A richer flavour not wild Cambria’s1 hills,
  • Nor Scotia’s2 rocks with heath and thyme3 o’erspread,
  • Give to their flocks; than, lone Barbuda,4 you,
  • Than you, Anguilla,5 to your sheep impart.
  • Even Britain’s vintage, here, improv’d, we quaff; [615]
  • Even Lusitanian,6 even Hesperian wines.
  • Those from the Rhine’s7 imperial banks (poor Rhine!
  • How have thy banks been died with brother-blood?
  • Unnatural warfare!)8 strength and flavour gain
  • In this delicious clime. Besides, the Cane [620]
  • Wafted to every quarter of the globe,

  • Makes the vast produce of the world your own.

  • OR rather, doth the love of nature charm;
  • Its mighty love your chief attention claim?

VER. 613. Barbuda,] This is a low, and not large stock-island, belonging to the Codrington family. Part of this island, as also two plantations in Barbadoes, were left by Colonel Christopher Codrington, for building a college in Barbardoes, and converting Negroes to the Christian religion.9

VER. 614. Anguilla,] This island is about thirty miles long and ten broad. Though not mountainous, it is rocky, and abounds with strong passes; so that a few of its inhabitants, who are indeed expert in the use of fire-arms, repulsed, with great slaughter, a considerable detachment of French, who made a descent thereon in the war preceding the last.10 Cotton and cattle are its chief commodities. Many of the inhabitants are rich; the captain-general of the Leeward-Islands nominates the governor and council. They have no assembly.

  1. Cambria is the Latin name for Wales. ↩︎

  2. Scotia is the Latin name for Scotland. ↩︎

  3. Plants of the genus Thymus, native to Greenland, Eurasia, and northeastern tropical Africa. ↩︎

  4. A small island near Antigua and now part of the nation of Antigua and Barbuda. ↩︎

  5. Anguilla is a British overseas territory and the most northerly of the Leeward Islands. ↩︎

  6. Lusitania (now modern Portugal) was an ancient region of western Iberia inhabited by the Lusitani but also by other peoples, including Celtic tribes. ↩︎

  7. A major river that flows through Germany. Rieslings are the best-known Rhenish wines. ↩︎

  8. Refers to the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), a series of wars that eventually enveloped most of continental Europe and included the Franco-Hapsburg War (1635-1648), which was fought in part along the Rhine. ↩︎

  9. Christopher Codrington (1668-1710) was born in Barbados and belonged to the wealthy Codrington family, which owned sugar plantations in Antigua and Barbados and leased land in Barbuda. Codrington served as deputy-governor of Barbados and governor-general of the Leeward Islands. At his death in 1710, he bequeathed his Barbados plantations and a share of the island of Barbuda to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), an Anglican missionary organization that aimed to convert colonial inhabitants, including enslaved and free Africans, to Christianity. In 1745, the SPG opened Codrington College, which initially served only white colonists. ↩︎

  10. The War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748), during which a French force unsuccessfully tried to invade Anguilla in 1745. ↩︎