sailing vessels with comparative ease. Sloops laden with manufactures,
domestic and foreign, collected at some city like Providence, New York,
or Philadelphia, skirted the coasts, visited small ports, and sailed up
the navigable rivers to trade with local merchants who had for exchange
the raw materials which they had gathered in from neighboring farms.
Larger ships carried the grain, live stock, cloth, and hardware of New
England to the Southern colonies, where they were traded for tobacco,
leather, tar, and ship timber. From the harbors along the Connecticut
shores there were frequent sailings down through Long Island Sound to
Maryland, Virginia, and the distant Carolinas.

=Growth of Towns.=--In connection with this thriving trade and industry
there grew up along the coast a number of prosperous commercial centers
which were soon reckoned among the first commercial towns of the whole
British empire, comparing favorably in numbers and wealth with such
ports as Liverpool and Bristol. The statistical records of that time are
mainly guesses; but we know that Philadelphia stood first in size among
these towns. Serving as the port of entry for Pennsylvania, Delaware,
and western Jersey, it had drawn within its borders, just before the
Revolution, about 25,000 inhabitants. Boston was second in rank, with
somewhat more than 20,000 people. New York, the "commercial capital of
Connecticut and old East Jersey," was slightly smaller than Boston, but
growing at a steady rate. The fourth town in size was Charleston, South
Carolina, with about 10,000 inhabitants. Newport in Rhode Island, a
center of rum manufacture and shipping, stood fifth, with a population
of about 7000. Baltimore and Norfolk were counted as "considerable
towns." In the interior, Hartford in Connecticut, Lancaster and York in
Pennsylvania, and Albany in New York, with growing populations and
increasing trade, gave prophecy of an urban America away from the
seaboard. The other towns were straggling villages. Williamsburg,