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 There were some fearful drawn battles, both in the North Sea and the Channel. Once the Dutch sailed into the Thames and the Medway and burned a lot of our ships at Chatham. But the main result of these wars was that the Dutch gave up to us their colony in North America, which was henceforth to be called New York. In the same reign ‘North and South Carolina’ were added to our American list of states; they lie south of Virginia, are hot and swampy, and produce mainly rice and tobacco.

Besides these colonies we possessed several valuable West Indian islands, notably Jamaica, which grew sugar; we had a whale-fishing and fur-trading station in Hudson Bay, northwards from the French settlements in Canada; we had several little dots of land protected by forts on the west coast of Africa, whence we exported black slaves to our own and the Spanish colonies; and, in India, we had Bombay and Madras.