The sheriff was then directed to arrest Captain Hackett and have him "detained in safe custody without baile" until he should "answer for his crimes" at the next session of the General Court at Jamestown.
Thus a duel was averted, and Mr. Fox did not meet Captain Hackett "in ye valey." The valley was probably chosen by Captain Hackett so that the duel could take place without observation or interruption, and it was the dividing line between their estates.
Hackett was scrupulous to inform Fox of the length of the rapier he intended to use, but had he followed regulations exactly, he would have left the selection of the weapon to his opponent.
TRADE
In the early days the Northern Neck carried on trade with various places besides England. Lancaster County seems to have been especially active in this trade. From the following record it appears that tobacco and grain were not the only articles used in trading with the Barbadoes: "In 1686 the sloop Happy transported from Lancaster County to that island, 2 firkins of butter, 2 barrels of pork, and 22 sides of tanned leather, in addition to 144 bushels of Indian corn." Trade to the West Indies was conducted in small Virginia-built sloops.
The Dutch brought to the Neck to exchange for tobacco such things as linen, coarse cloth, beer, brandy and "other distilled spirits." In 1653 Henry Mountford of Rotterdam appointed an agent in Lancaster. About the same time, Jacobis Vis had "important transactions in exchange of merchandise for tobacco in the counties of the Northern Neck." It was said by the Dutch that Virginians could beat them in a deal.
A letter from Captain James Barton of New England to a citizen of Lancaster indicates that there was commerce between these places. Barton stated in the letter that he wished to secure a cargo of tobacco, hides and pork for market in the Barbadoes. His ketch, with a cargo of rum, salt, sugar, cloth and salted cod and mackerel, would sail from Salem and exchange cargoes in Virginia and then continue to the West Indies. Boats from the West Indies sailed to Virginia and then on to New England.
THE COLONIAL SAILOR
A sailor was always a source of interest to the public in colonial days, whether he wore his tarry working clothes or his shore outfit. There was the aura of foreign lands about him—he brought stories of far places to the news-hungry colonists of the New World.
On shore the sailor was a glamorous figure in his flapping trousers, scarlet sash and cutlasses, or dressed "in a strange habitt with a four-cornered Capp instead of a hatt and his Breeches hung with Ribbons from Wast downward a great depth, one over the other like Shingles of a house." He wore his pigtail shoved into an eelskin, which was supposed to make his hair grow longer.