Answer. Rivers, we have four, as I named before, all able, safely and severally to bear an harbour a thousand ships of the greatest burthen.
15. What number of planters, servants and slaves; and how many parishes are there in your plantation?
Answer. We suppose, and I am very sure we do not much miscount, that there is in Virginia above forty thousand persons, men, women and children, and of which there are two thousand black slaves, six thousand christian servants, for a short time; the rest are born in the country or have come in to settle and seat, in bettering their condition in a growing country.
16. What number of English, Scots, or Irish have for these seven years past came yearly to plant ... within your government; as also what blacks or slaves have been brought in ...?
Answer. Yearly we suppose there comes in, of servants, about fifteen hundred, of which most are English, few Scotch, and fewer Irish, and not above two or three ships of Negroes in seven years.[104]
17. [Mortality? The answer expresses inability to give exact figures, from lack of a "register office," but insists upon improvements in health of new immigrants as compared with earlier times.]
18. What number of ships to trade yearly to and from your plantations, and of what burthen are they?
Answer. English ships, near eighty, come out of England and Ireland every year for tobacco; few New England ketches; but of our own we never had yet more than two at one time, and those not more than twenty tons burthen.
19. What obstructions do you find to the improvement of trade and navigation ...?