Previous to most of these important discoveries, and during the earlier portion of the eighteenth century, while England was distracted by war, and the nations of Europe were rivalling, by force of arms, to obtain an ascendency over each other, her American colonies[208] were, by peaceful and undisturbed pursuits, laying the foundation of that prosperity which enabled them, before the close of the century, to demand and obtain their severance from the mother-country, and their social and political independence. So early as 1729 the city of Philadelphia in the province of Pennsylvania owned vessels amounting to six thousand tons, employed in a lucrative trade with the West Indies, and had also in that year received no less than six thousand two hundred and eight emigrants from Great Britain. New York, as well as Pennsylvania, carried on a large trade in grain and provisions with Spain and Portugal, besides sending considerable quantities of furs and peltry, obtained from the native Indians, to England. Massachusetts had already one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, employing forty thousand tons of shipping in their foreign and coasting trades, or close upon six hundred vessels of one sort and another, one-half of which traded to Europe; while the American fisheries were already so valuable and extensive that two hundred and fifty thousand quintals of dried fish were annually exported to Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean.[209] New England then supplied the largest and finest masts in the world. The exportation of rice from Carolina, which in 1733 amounted to thirty-six thousand five hundred and eighty-four barrels, besides considerable quantities of pitch, turpentine, lumber, provisions, and Indian corn, had in 1740 increased to ninety-one thousand one hundred and ten barrels. Georgia, established in 1732 by a society of gentlemen, headed by General Oglethorpe, with the view of producing silk, the worm having been brought from Piedmont, was paving the way for the growth of rice, indigo, and other products suited to her soil and warm climate.[210] [Sidenote: Commercial jealousy in the West Indies.]