Although it was very hard work, cultivating tobacco was less brutal than slogging in a rice field or broiling in a cane field, and it exposed the worker to fewer mosquitoes bearing malaria and yellow fever. Chesapeake slaves also lived in sufficient concentrations to find marriage partners and bear children, in contrast to many northern slaves. Consequently, natural increase swelled the Chesapeake slave population, which enabled the planters to reduce their African imports after 1750.
