detracted from the quality of Virginian beef were favorable to the quality of Virginian bacon. The wandering existence of the colonial hog, by reducing its fat, was probably as effective in creating the superior flavor of its flesh as the mast, roots, and herbs upon which it fed while ranging in the woods. Clayton declared that shoats or porklets were the principal food of a large section of the population. Poultry were so numerous in the Colony even during the time of the Company that it was affirmed that only those planters who were bad husbandmen failed to breed an hundred a year, and that they formed a part of the daily meals of all who were in good circumstances.[1] As the general wealth increased, the use of domestic fowls as food was not confined to those who had comfortable means. Devries, a Dutch captain who visited the Colony in 1643, has recorded the fact that a carpenter, upon whose house he had stumbled when lost in the vicinity of Newport’s News, set before him a meal consisting of turkey and chicken, which had been killed for his use.[2]
The number of sheep in Virginia being comparatively small, mutton was more esteemed than venison, which was so commonly eaten in some parts of the Colony that the people had grown tired of it.[3] The other kinds of game furnished food at certain seasons of the year in great abundance. Not only were the flocks of wild turkeys very large, but the birds themselves often attained to an extraordinary weight. The wild fowls in the rivers, creeks, and bays were so numerous in autumn and winter
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 865. Poultry, probably because they were so abundant, were rarely enumerated in the inventories. See Records of York County, vol. 1657-1662, p.161; also Ibid., vol. 1664-1672, p. 163, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Devries’ Voyages from Holland to America, p. 188.
- ↑ Clayton’s Virginia, p. 35, Force’s Historical Tracts; vol. III; Leah and Rachel, p. 13, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
