Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/238

214 trade, amounting to at least thirty-eight thousand tons; one half of these vessels traded to Europe. About six thousand persons were employed in its fisheries. Connecticut appears to have made steady progress, and in 1750 is computed to have had one hundred thousand inhabitants. Rhode Island, which at the beginning of the eighteenth century had about ten thousand inhabitants, in 1730 possessed a population of eighteen thousand, of whom nine hundred and eighty-five were Indians and one thousand six hundred and forty-eight negro slaves: in 1750, there were thirty thousand inhabitants in this colony. Newport, which was the metropolis, contained a population of something less than five thousand, including Indians and negroes. The first newspaper was published in this colony in 1732. In the year 1738, Newport contained seven places of worship; there was a large society of Quakers at Portsmouth, and in the other eleven townships of the colony there were twenty-five assemblages for Christian worship. In regard to New Hampshire, we find in Holmes's Annals that its population, in 1750, is computed to have been twenty-four thousand.

The militia of New England, as a whole, is computed to have amounted to fifty thousand Iron was the only metallic ore which the colonists had undertaken to improve; and there were now six furnaces for hollow ware, and nineteen forges, in New England. In 1730, fifty hundred weight of hemp, produced in New England and Carolina, were exported to Britain. In 1712, certain adventurers in Connecticut conceived hopes of great enrichment from the discovery of two copper mines, which were erroneously supposed to contain also some veins of more precious metals. One of these mines at Simsbury, was worked to a great extent, but to little profit. The excavation which they made was afterwards converted into a prison, whereby, as Trumbull rather drily says, it yielded more advantage to the province than by all the copper that had been extracted from it.

We have before spoken of the troubles that arose between New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the matter of the former having a governor for themselves. After much unpleasant litigation the question was settled. The trade of New Hampshire, at this date, consisted chiefly in the exportation of lumber and fish to Spain, Portugal and the Carribee Islands. In winter small vessels were despatched to the southern colonies with English and West India goods, and returned with cargoes of corn and pork. The manufacture of linen was considerably increased by the coming of Irish emigrants to this colony. Although New Hampshire was justly considered to be a healthy region, it was about this time visited with a fatal epidemic, called "the throat distempter", which broke out again in 1754 and 1784, and was very destructive on all these occasions. The symptoms were a swelled throat, with white or ash-colored specks, an efflorescence on the skin, extreme debility of the whole body, and a strong tendency to