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An attempt was made by the Dutch government a few years
ago, to cultivate the land by Europeans ; and a numberof German
husbandmen, particularly from the Palatinate, were engaged, and
sent to Surinam, where land was given them without any expense.
But just as these industrious people had begun to labour, they fell
a sacrifice to the climate; now if*instead of engaging them to
cultivate the ground, the government had ordered some savannas to
have heen cleared by the negroes, then given this prepared land to
the new European colonists, supplying them also with a stock of
cattle to increase the breed, and thus to have afforded a supply to
the colonists of butter and cheese, which at present, are frequeotly
scarce, then it is possible that these persons would have become-
inured to the climate, by employing them in this kind of farming,
which is not so fatiguing as breaking up and first cultivating the land.
Many of these persons might have rendered great service to ^ e colony,
and made fortunes for themselves, as butchers’ meat and cheese
sell very high m Surinam. From their increasing families good‘directors
mightalso have been chosen ; whilst at present the-plantcrs are
often obliged, by having no other choice, to trust their Estates to
newly arrived adventurers, who frequently ruin the plantations, and
treat the negroes most cruelly.
With respect to Europeans becoming fit to cultivate the land in
the tropics, it is not to be expected till some generations shall have
continued to reside in the colony, when their constitutions will be*
rendered fit for the management of the different branches of agriculture,
as the negroes are at present. On the western coast'of
Africa, an easterly wind blows almost continually over an immense
tract of land and burning deserts, and. is- consequently
charged with a most scorching heat ; wherefore the*; negroes who
are brought from that coast, when they arrive in the colonies, and
while at work, find a considerable relief from the refreshing sea
breezes which prevail here. But agriculture in this part of the