the liquor was drawn off too soon; now the pulp was not duly granulated, and now it was worked too much.  To these inconveniences, for which practice would doubtless have found a remedy, were added others of a much greater magnitude—­the mortality of the negroes, from the vapour of fermented liquor (an alarming circumstance, that, I am informed, both by the French and English planters, constantly attends the process), the failure of the seasons, and the ravages of the worm.  These, or some of these evils, drove them at length to other pursuits, where industry might find a surer recompense.”—­(p. 283.)

The fallacy of much of this requires no comment, as it must strike even the most careless reader,—­for if the so-called indigo-growers did not know the process of manufacturing the commodity, then it could not be surprising that they failed.  Thus the cause of their failure required no comment, and no explanation.  Were a ploughman taken from the field and placed at the helm of a ship, and the vessel in consequence wrecked, would any one be astonished but at the folly of those who placed him there?  This was the case with the indigo-growers,—­they attempted what they did not understand, and, consequently, lost their labor and their money.  The mortality of the negroes employed, stated as another reason for abandoning the attempt, requires a somewhat more lengthy notice.

I can briefly say, that I have learned that in the Central States of America, deaths among indigo-laborers are not more frequent than in other branches of tropical industry; and I never heard or have read that the original growers complained of the mortality attending the progress.  The truth is, that this statement is not founded on fact.  There is nothing whatever in the manufacture of indigo, either in the cultivation or the granulation, or even the maceration and fermentation of the plant, which is directly or indirectly, per se, injurious to human life.  I have certainly never seen the indigo plant macerated on a large scale; but I have myself steeped much of it in water, and allowed it even to rot, and found nothing in the mass differing in any marked degree from decomposed vegetable matter.  It seems to me that this idea of the manufacture of indigo being especially inimical to human life, is as unfounded as the belief, even by Humboldt, up to a very recent period, that none of the Cerealia would grow in tropical climates.  In conversing with an old gentleman in Jamaica, some twelve years since, who had tried the manufacture of indigo, and with every prospect of success, but abandoned it, as he confessed, for the cultivation of the sugar cane, since it was then more profitable, he suggested the solution, that as the manufacture was light work, probably aged and debilitated, in place of youthful and vigorous slaves, were too frequently employed in the process—­hence the mortality.  This may be correct to a certain