" Jamaica was the Ophir of the West of Scotland in those times. Upon its sugar fields and by the agency of its slave labour, Glasgow slowly emerged from its primeval state of small borough town, to be a business centre, rivalling and soon surpassing Bristol in its West India trade. "

― R.B. Cunninghame Graham , Doughty Deeds: An Account of the Life of Robert Graham of Gartmore, Poet & Politician, 1735 - 1797, drawn from his letter-books & correspondence