With
Martinique and Guadaloupe it had a similar, though less extensive,
intercourse. As the natural outlet for the manufactures of Rouen and
Paris, it supplied the French islands in the West Indies with the
principal part of their plantation stores; and the situation of the port
was equally advantageous for the importation of their produce. Guinea
and the coast of Africa afforded a second and important branch of
commerce; and this also is little likely entirely to recover. We may
add that, happily it is not so; for it depended principally upon the
slave-trade, the profits of which were such, that it was calculated a
vessel might clear upon an average nearly eight thousand pounds by each
voyage[41]. Its whale-fishery has, for more than a century, ceased to
exist. This pursuit began with spirit and at as early a period as the
year 1632, when the merchants of this port, in conjunction with those of
Biscay, fitted out the expedition commanded by Vrolicq, seized upon a
station near Spitzbergen, where they would have obtained a permanent
establishment, had they not been violently expelled by the Danes and
Dutch.
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