Our West India Colonies are without exception essentially agricultural, not a single manufacture existing in them unconnected with agriculture, nor any important branch of commerce, the export trade, being in a great measure limited to agricultural produce, and the import trade limited to the supplying the ordinary and daily wants of the inhabitants deriving their subsistence chiefly from that produce.

Compared with the others, Barbados stands high, both as regards the proportional extent of land under culture, and the skill and energy of its planters.

The superficial area of the island has been estimated at 106,470 acres; of which about 100,000 acres are said to be under some kind of cultivation; about 40,000 acres in sugar canes, the remainder in pasture and provision grounds. This estimate must be considered, I believe, only an approximate one, especially as regards the acres in canes, and the land lying waste or unproductive; the former varying from year to year, (it has been gradually increasing;) the latter from its situation, being chiefly in gullies, not easily measured.

Some of the circumstances favorable to a successful agriculture have been already pointed out.