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.
The colony of Pennsylvania was not settled by Pen till the year 1680: he
found there, however, many English families, and a considerable number of
Dutch and Swedes. The wise regulations of Pen soon drew to him industrious
settlers; but the commerce in which they engaged did not become so
considerable as to demand our notice.
III. The commercial intercourse of England with India, which has now grown
to such extent and importance, and from which has sprung the anomaly of
merchant-sovereigns over one of the richest and most populous districts of
the globe, began in the reign of Elizabeth. The English Levant Company, in
their attempts to extend their trade with the East, seem first to have
reached Hindostan, in 1584, with English merchandize.
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