[871] Ib., 89; and Weld, i, 199, 236. The reports of all travelers as to the want of fresh meat in the Valley are most curious. That region was noted, even in those early days, for its abundance of cattle.
[872] Ib., 144.
[873] "Notes on Virginia": Jefferson; Works: Ford, iv, 69; and see Weld, i, 114, for similar diet in Pennsylvania.
[874] Ib., 183-84.
[875] Weld, i, 206. "Sigars and whiskey satisfy these good people who thus spend in a quarter of an hour in the evening, the earnings of a whole day. The landlord of the Inn has also a distillery of whiskey," writes La Rochefoucauld, in 1797, of the mountain people of Virginia. He thus describes the houses and people living in the valley towards Staunton: "The habitations are in this district more numerous than on the other side of the Blue Mountains, but the houses are miserable; mean, small log houses, inhabited by families which swarm with children. There exists here the same appearance of misery as in the back parts of Pennsylvania." (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 173-76.)
[876] "It took a good deal of New England rum to launch a 75 ton schooner ... to raise a barn ... or to ordain a regular minister.... Workingmen in the fields, in the woods, in the mills and handling logs and lumber on the river were supplied with regular rations of spirits." (Maine Hist. Soc. Col. (2d Series), vi, 367-68.)
The rich people of Boston loved picnic parties in the near-by country, at which was served "Punch, warm and cold, before dinner; excellent beef, Spanish and Bordeaux wines, cover their tables ... Spruce beer, excellent cyder, and Philadelphia porter precede the wines." (De Warville, 58.) This inquiring Frenchman called on Hancock, but found that he had a "marvelous gout which dispenses him from all attentions and forbids the access to his house." (Ib., 66.) As to New England country stores, "you find in the same shop, hats, nails, liquors." (Ib., 127.)
[877] La Rochefoucauld, iv, 577.
[878] Washington to Green (an employee) March 31, 1789; Writings: Ford, xi, 377.
[879] Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, footnote to 181; and see Talleyrand's description of a brandy-drinking bout at this house in which he participated.