Home / Brodhead, John Romeyn. History of the State of New York, Vol. I (1609-1691). New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853. / Passage

History of the State of New York, Vol. I (1609-1691)

Brodhead, John Romeyn. History of the State of New York, Vol. I (1609-1691). New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853. 300 words

the remaining places within the Charter where the Company maintains government, forts or quarters, ought to be considered under two divisions, some being of a nature not to demand any cultivation or population, affording simply trade others again, where the lands must ;

necessarily be first improved by agriculture and population if they are to render any return of moment. The first division includes all the places situate on the North Coast of Africa, from Cape Verde south unto Cape Lopes Gonsalvo, where hides, gum, wax, elephants' teeth, grains of paradise and chiefly Guinea gold are obtained in trade which wares are brought by Blacks ;

from a distance in the interior, without the aid of cultivation, and trucked with a few commissaries stationed at posts and in vessels here and there. The Company can prosecute this trade as well as, yea, better than individuals (who injure each other by misrepresentations), especially were a certain capital or fund of money employed in it; were the cargoes bought in good order and sent off in due season, and the greatest economy observed in the fitting out of the ships. The XIX. adopted, heretofore, right good resolutions and orders on this subject and on that of the trade to the coast of Guinea, but owing either to inability or jealousy of the Chambers, they were not observed. That coast is, in consequence, much resorted to by foreign nations, so that if other arrangements be not, in a short time, adopted in the premises, it runs great risk of being wholly filched, or at least rendered unproductive for the Company. There is no other way to prevent this than to appropriate a certain cash capital and fund which ought to remain specially applied thereunto in the hands sufficient to carry on the trade,