Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

71 страница из 128

Letters received from Jamaica at that time did not hold out much prospect of arranging peaceable commerce with the Spanish dominions. One correspondent wrote despondently:

"The fortune of trade here none can guess, but all think that the Spaniards so abhor us that all the commands of Spain and the necessity of the Indies will hardly bring them to an English port; if anything will effect it, negroes are the likeliest."[84]

Another reported that most of the old soldiers had become hunters, and it was supposed that they killed a thousand hundred weight of wild hogs per month, for which they found a ready market at a good price. Sir Thomas Modyford's brother-in-law, a Mr. Kendall, submitted a proposal for recalling the privateers, which probably represented Modyford's own views.

"This", he wrote, "must be done by fair means and giving them leave to dispose of their prizes when they come in, otherwise they will be alarmed and go to the French at Tortuga, and his Majesty will lose 1,000 or 1,500 stout men, but they will still take the Spaniards and disturb the trade to Jamaica, and if war break out with Holland, will certainly go to the Dutch at Curacao and interrupt all trade to Jamaica; for they are a desperate people, the greater part having been in men-of-war for 20 years. Therefore it will be much to the advantage of the Spaniard that the governor has orders to permit them to sell their prizes and set them a-planting; and if his Majesty shall think fit to have Tortuga or Curacao taken, none will be fitter for that work than they."[85]