Nantes, February 14. 1777
[Extract]
. . . A large ship, last week, arrived at L'Orient, in six weeks from Charleston, bound to this Port; she has on board five hundred barrels of Rice ー and upwards of sixty thousand pounds of Indigo; the Cargo (except fourteen thousand pounds of the Indigo, which is on private Account,) belongs to the State, and as it comes to a good market ー it will produce a great profit, and neat at least Eighteen Thousand Pounds Sterling. . . .
1. Anne Izard Deas, ed., Correspondence of Mr. Ralph Izard of South Carolina, from the year 1774 to 1804 with a Short Memoir (New York, 1844), 241-49. Hereafter cited as Deas, ed., Correspondence of Ralph Izard.