harshness of the country. Not satisfied with describing the Colony in the light of the difficulties which they had to overcome in rolling the tobacco to the shores of rivers, they ascribed to it a very unwholesome character, because at the time they were engaged in the performance of this work, they indulged very freely in drinking cold water and cider and in devouring the unripe fruit, which led to serious fevers and fluxes.[1]
Whenever the burden of the ship in which the tobacco was to be transported was too heavy to allow it to sail directly up to the wharf, or to enter the shallow creeks on which so many of the plantations were situated, the hogs-heads were brought to the vessel by means of flats and shallops, the hire of which, when necessary, was always a source of considerable expense.[2] In order to avoid a long course of navigation, it was the habit of some shipmasters to despatch sloops into the different rivers to collect a sufficient number of casks to form a cargo. To ensure an unobstructed channel in the small streams, there was a special provision that not only the logs which had been floated down and had been lodged should be removed, and the trees which had fallen into the water from the banks be cut away,[3] but that no master of a vessel should throw his ballast into the channel when he came to anchor. The importance of this general regulation in the public view was shown by the grant to the different counties in 1679 of the power to pass by-laws to compel its strict observance.[4]
The ships employed in the transportation of tobacco to
- ↑ Beverley’s History of Virginia, p. 241.
- ↑ Letters of William Fitzhugh, March 10, 1682-83. For an instance of the damage tobacco was exposed to in the course of such transportation, reference may be made to Records of Middlesex County, original vol. 1694-1705, p. 283.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, pp. 484, 485.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 455.
