Animals.
Such is the beginning of an enthusiastic little pamphlet, of unknown authorship, published in London in 1649,[1] the year in which Charles I. perished on the scaffold. It is entitled “A Perfect Description of Virginia,” and one of its effects, if not its purpose, must have been to attract immigrants to that colony from the mother country. In Virginia “there is nothing wanting” to make people happy; there are “plenty, health, and wealth.” Of English about 15,000 are settled there, with 300 negro servants. Of kine, oxen, bulls, and calves, there are 20,000, and there is plenty of good butter and cheese. There are 200 horses, 50 asses, 3,000 sheep with good wool, 5,000 goats, and swine and poultry innumerable. Besides these European animals, there are many deer, with “rackoons, as good meat as lamb,” and “passonnes” [opossums], otters and beavers, foxes and dogs that “bark not.” In the waters are “above thirty sorts” of fish “very excellent good in their kinds.” The wild turkey sometimes weighs sixty pounds, and besides partridges, ducks, geese, and pigeons, the woods abound in sweet songsters and “most rare coloured parraketoes, and [we have] one bird we call the mock-bird; for he will imitate all other birds’ notes and cries, both day and night birds, yea, the owls and nightingales.”
Agriculture.
The farmers have under cultivation many hundred acres of excellent wheat; their maize, or “Virginia corn,” yields an increase of 500 for 1, and makes “good bread and furmity” [porridge]; they have barley in plenty, and six brew-houses which brew strong and well-flavoured beer. There are fifteen kinds of fruit that for delicacy rival the fruits of Italy; in the gardens grow potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, onions, artichokes, asparagus, beans, and better peas than those of England, with all manner of herbs and “physick flowers.” The tobacco is everywhere “much vented and esteemed,” but such immense crops are raised that the price is but three pence a pound. There is also a hope that indigo, hemp and flax, vines and silk-worms, can be cultivated with profit, since it is chiefly hands that are wanted. It surely would be better to grow silk here, where mulberry trees are so plenty, than to fetch it as we do from Persia and China “with great charge and expense and hazard,” thereby enriching “heathen and Mahumetans.”
Northwest passage.
At the same time they are hoping soon to discover a way to China, “for Sir Francis Drake was on the back side of Virginia in his voyage about the world in 37 degrees ... and now all the question is only how broad the land may be to that place [i. e. California] from the head of James River above the falls.” By prosecuting discovery in this direction “the planters in Virginia shall gain the rich trade of the East India, and so cause it to be driven through the continent of Virginia, part by land and part by water, and in a most gainful way and safe, and far less expenseful and dangerous, than now it is.”
Commercial rivals.
It behooves the English, says our pamphlet, to be more vigilant, and to pay more heed to their colonies; for behold, “the Swedes have come and crept into a river called Delawar, that is within the limits of Virginia,” and they are driving “a great and secret trade of furs.” Moreover, “the Hollanders have stolen into a river called Hudson’s River, in the limits also of Virginia, ... they have built a strong fort ... and drive a trade of fur there with the natives for above £10,000 a year. These two plantations are ... on our side of Cape Cod which parts us and New England. Thus are the English nosed in all places, and out-traded by the Dutch. They would not suffer the English to use them so; but they have vigilant statesmen, and advance all they can for a common good, and will not spare any encouragements to their people to discover.”
New England.
Health of body and soul.