Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Bahama Islands, that his Excellency being possessed of several very extensive and valuable tracts of land (as well by grants from the Crown, as by purchase) situated on the banks of the River Mississippi and Mobile, in West-Florida, to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand acres and upwards, (exclusive of Dauphin Island, whose situation for trade is so well known,) is desirous of encouraging all substantial planters or others, who wish to become settlers in those parts. The fertility of soil, salubrity of climate, and most delightful situation of those tracts, are so well known, that they need no fuller description than that printed by his Excellency for His Majesty, who has thought fit to order the intended capital, on account of its rising consequence and most convenient situation, to be removed from Fort Bute to Browne’s Clifts, nearly opposite to that most beautiful and populous Town called Point-Coupee, belonging to the Spaniards.

For further particulars his Excellency refers the publick to the printed reasons left with the printer hereof, in order that those who are inclined to remove to that flourishing Province may be well informed, and may, by application to his Excellency, at New-Providence, be well assured of meeting with every encouragement they can wish for or desire.

Governour BROWNE’S Reasons, as presented to the King, for an immediate Civil Government in the BRITISH Dominions adjoining to the River MISSISSIPPI, in NORTH-AMERICA.

Whoever is conversant with the natural history of America, must be sensible, from the concurrent testimony of writers, travellers, and engineers, that no country in the universe exceeds the neighbourhood of the Mississippi in fertility of soil, salubrity of climate, or convenience of situation. Both sides of the river, previous to the late peace, in which the eastern was ceded to Great Britain, went under the general name of Louisiana, and they have been long celebrated, no less for the prodigious diversity than the prodigious luxuriancy of their productions. They frequently yield two annual crops of Indian corn, as well as rice, and, with a little cultivation, would furnish grain of every kind in the most flattering abundance. But their value is not confined to the fertility of the meadows, or the immensity of the champaign lands; their timber is as fine as any in the world, and the quantities of live-oak, ash, mulberry, walnut, palm, cypress, and cedar, are equally astonishing.* Yet what is still more astonishing, above a million of acres are sufficiently clear on the English borders to admit of instant habitation, and to answer all the purposes of a Colony long improved. The advantages which they offer are not remote, they are immediate; they do not call for the industry of years, like many of the senior Provinces in America, but, on the first appearance of the settler, present themselves to be enjoyed. The neighbourhood of the Mississippi, besides, furnishes the richest fruits in an infinite variety; particularly grapes, oranges, lemons, and olives, in the highest perfection. It abounds with silk, cotton, sassafras, saffron, and rhubarb; is particularly adapted for flax and hemp, and the goodness of tobacco even equals the Brazils; cochineal also, of the best quality, is found in plenty on it’s banks, and indigo is at this moment a staple commodity, which commonly yields four cuttings to the planter. In a word, whatever is rich or rare in the choicest climates of Europe, seems natural to such a degree on the Mississippi, that France, though she sent few or no emigrants into Louisiana but decayed soldiers, or the refuse of her streets, (and these very poorly supplied with the implements of husbandry,) soon began to dread a rival in her Colony, particularly in the cultivation of vines, from which she prohibited the Colonists, under a very heavy penalty. Yet soil and situation triumphed over all political restraints, and the adventurers, at the end of the late war, were little inferiour to the most ancient settlements of America in all the modern refinements of luxury. From the success attending the French settlers, under every possible disadvantage, it is evident that an establishment on the Mississippi, favoured with the benign influence of a British Government, under which freedom and property are inviolably-sacred, would be productive of the happiest consequences, especially as some arguments may be urged in support of such a measure, which, perhaps, never before existed in a case of colonization.

* The Spaniards now cut down as much timber as they think proper on the British side of the Mississippi, and send it away to the Havana, for the use of their Navy, without interruption.

In the first place, contrary to the general principles of new establishments, the Mother Country is neither to be drained of a subject, nor the Government to incur the minutest expense. To maintain these assertions, it must be observed, that since the conclusion of the late war at least twenty thousand families in the old English Colonies have removed, on account of the extending population and the barrenness of the soil, to the back settlements of their respective Provinces. Their emigration has been inconceivably injurious to the places which they have deserted, and must be equally injurious to the interest of this Kingdom; for in proportion as choice or necessity has detached these people from an intercourse with the seats of trade, they have been driven into manufactures. Agriculture, undoubtedly, is the grand mine of American opulence; but men must sacrifice their wishes to their wants; and such articles as the back settler cannot purchase without much difficulty or much loss, he will naturally attempt to make for his own accommodation. His efforts at first may be awkward, yet he will improve upon practice, and succeed at last, where he only labours for convenience or utility. The consequence is obvious; consuming none of her commodities, he becomes commercially annihilated to the State; nor does the evil terminate even in such annihilation. His example incessantly encourages the emigration of others, and lays the foundation of that independency for America, which is alone to be dreaded from her maturity in manufactures, and which is big with so many dangers to the general happiness of the British Empire. Was a civil Government, therefore, formed on the Mississippi, great numbers of these emigrants would immediately proceed to a situation so peculiarly calculated to the unbounded views of commerce; where, from necessitous farmers, they would become considerable planters; where, from being worse than lost, they would speedily be recovered; and instead of hourly impairing, they would hourly add to the true prosperity of this Kingdom. Yet numerous as the back settlers of the old English Provinces are known to be, they do not constitute by any means the only foundation on which England may depend for the speedy establishment of a flourishing Colony; on the contrary, many thousand foreign settlers in Louisiana, who have formed a strong interest with the Indians, will directly place themselves under the protection of the British Government;*

*Mr. John Durade, late a settler of great eminence on the Mississippi, now residing at Pensacola, wrote, in February, 1770, to Governour Browne, in the following terms: “The cruelties committed by the Spaniards, and their tyrannical yoke, are circumstances which cannot fail of procuring to the English possessions, from their proximity, an acquisition of many industrious families, who will be able to transport their effects thither without risk, and are acquainted with the soil and other circumstances. Germans and Acadians are equally uneasy under their new masters; the latter are settled near Manchack, (a part of the British territory,) and would be the first to resort thither.”

Mr. Durade, in the same letter to Governour Browne, expatiates upon the fertility of the country, the salubrity of the climate, and the certain advantages which the proposed settlement would produce to Great Britain. He declared, that a man, his wife, and five children, with two negroes, one wench, on a farm of eighteen acres, may not only subsist very well, but make an annual saving, proportioned to their industry. Hunting affords infinite assistance to the inferiour inhabitants, wild cattle and deer abounding beyond belief, and the rivers teeming in equal plenty with the most Excellent fish. Mr. Durade affirms, as an attested fact, that twenty negroes, such as are usually employed, will yield a yearly profit of twenty thousand French Livres, and deducting three thousand Livres for their maintenance and mortality, seventeen thousand, or seven hundred and eighty Pounds English, is the very least which the planter can reasonably expect from their labour, even if they are employed but eight months in the cultivation of Indigo. Mr. Durade adds, that many planters who began only with one negro, have now from twenty to fifty on their plantations, and requests Governour Browne, in case an English Government is erected on the Mississippi, to intercede for a grant of four thousand acres for him, together with an equal grant for a brother of his. “Expedite the patents (says he) as soon as possible, that we may immediately establish ourselves; but if the settlement is Hot made, we must decline the grant, as it will become useless.”

Besides Mons. Durade’s letter, Governour Browne received the following application from a body of the French, which quitted the western side of the Mississippi rather than be subject to Spain. They are now at Pensacola, waiting with the utmost impatience for an opportunity of putting themselves under the protection of our Government, and