A Separate draught of each patent should be Made out very distinct and accurate, Sworn to by the Surveyor General or his Deputy, delivered and lodged at the Council Office, after which an exact Map of each Province distinquishing every patent and the quantity of lands contained in each should be made out from the Several draughts and delivered at the Council's Office by the Surveyor General; No Patent should be Issued out from this time for vacant lands but what should be very exactly Survey'd and a draught of such a Survey particularly describing and Specifying the exact quantity of acres be attested upon Oath by the Surveyor General or his Deputy and annexed to the Patent. . . NB, as Government is Come to a determination to dispose of all vacant lands in North America by way of sale, the Crown's revenue might hereafter be considerably encreased by having the Several tracts laid out and numbered into townships of twenty thousand acres each as in the draught below, then every other Number only should be disposed of at first at a low rate, untill the half of each tract so laid out is granted, keeping and reserving to the Crown the remaining checkered half to be sold hereafter, and which the first Settlers as well as New ones would then be glad to purchase at a good price and a higher quit rent, to the great emolument of the Crown who would also by this means settle much sooner every vacant tract in each Province. Draught of a tract of land supposed to contain five hundred thousand acres devided into twenty five townships of twenty thousand acres each thirteen of which are disposed of Immediately and twelve reserved to be sold at an advanced price, as for example 13 townships sold now at one shilling p' acre and Subject to a quit rent of per hundred acres will give £13,000 and £325 per annum and Supposing that in ten years time the twelve remaining townships sell only at the rate of three shillings p' acre and Subject to a quit rent of three pence, will give £36,000 and £3000 per annum. CHAPTER II AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRY, AND TRADE, 1607-1763 The occupations to which the colonists addressed themselves after their settlement in America may be divided into three groups. In the first come agriculture, and stock raising and the extractive industries, as lumbering, the fur trade, and fishing. To these the colonists turned as offering the quickest and most lucrative reward for their efforts. The soil was everywhere rich and extremely productive, while necessity dictated resort to agriculture to secure a permanent subsistence. Forest and water teemed with life and offered products that could be secured with a minimum of effort, and, what was quite as important, with a minimum application of capital. The products thus obtained were moreover in great demand in Europe and could be easily exchanged there for the manufactured goods and commodities of the Old World. The second group of occupations were those that called for a larger investment of capital and more time and labor for their production. Such were shipbuilding, manufacturing, and the production of naval stores. While the last was closely allied to the extractive industries, it involved considerable skill and capital to develop it, while the returns were rather uncertain. Consequently all of these industries were developed more slowly and later than agriculture and the extractive industries. They can flourish only after a community has secured for itself an assured subsistence and has begun to accumulate capital. The third branch of industry was that of commerce, or the exchange of the raw materials and natural products of the New World for the manufactured commodities, textiles, tools, etc., of the industrially more developed nations of Europe. In this trade the colonists not only offered their products for exchange, but also acted as carriers and earned large profits with their ships. A most lucrative branch of this trade consisted in the exchange of the American continental products for those grown in the warmer climate of the West Indies. AGRICULTURE I. METHODS OF THE INDIANS Indian Agriculture in Virginia, 16121 The first task that confronted the colonists was to provide themselves with food, and in solving this problem they were greatly assisted by observing the practice of the Indians and often by friendly advice from them, as from Pocohontas in Virginia and Squanto in New England. In planting and cultivating maize, which was an unfamiliar grain, but one upon which they principally relied 1 Description of Virginia and Proceedings of the Colonie. By Captain John Smith (Oxford, 1612). In Original Narratives of Early American History. Edited by J. F. Jameson (New York, 1910), IV 95-6. Printed by permission of the editor and the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. 1 in the first distressful years, they followed exactly the Indian methods. These are described for us by John Smith in Virginia. The greatest labour they take, is in planting their corne, for the country naturally is overgrowne with wood. To prepare the ground they bruise the barke of the trees neare the roote, then do they scortch the roots with fire that they grow no more. The next yeare with a crooked peece of wood, they beat up the woodes by the rootes; and in that moulds, they plant their corne. Their manner is this. They make a hole in the earth with a sticke, and into it they put 4 graines of wheat and 2 of beanes. These holes they make 4 foote one from another. Their women and children do continually keepe it with weeding, and when it is growne midle high, they hill it about like a hop-yard. In Aprill they begin to plant, but their chiefe plantation is in May, and so they continue till the midst of June. What they plant in Aprill they reape in August, for May in September, for June in October. Every stalke of their corne commonly beareth two eares, some 3, seldome any 4, many but one, and some none. Every eare ordinarily hath betwixt 200 and 500 graines. II. AGRICULTURE IN NEW ENGLAND Poor Farming by New Englanders, 17751 Agriculture was the primary industry during the whole of the colonial period and after the first few years of trial offered a certain and comfortable living to the colonist. But since the land was relatively so abundant as compared with labor and capital it was used uneconomically and wastefully. The colonial system of agriculture has generally been called a system of "land butchery," but it was natural under the circumstances and economically intelligible if not altogether justifiable. A careful survey of American agriculture from Nova Scotia to Georgia was, made in 1775 by the anonymous author of American Husbandry, which furnishes the best picture we have of conditions as they existed toward the end of the colonial period. We may, however, accept them as fairly representative of conditions during the larger part of this period, for little change had been made and few improvements introduced. The writer describes American practices.carefully and intelligently, but with a strong prejudice for Old World methods. He is most severe in his criticism of New England methods of tillage and treatment of cattle, which are described in the following extract. The crops commonly cultivated are, first maize, which is the grand product of the country, and upon which the inhabitants prin1 American Husbandry. By an American (London, 1775). I, 50, 51-2, 55-8, 80-1. And the value, straw included, amounts to, from 50s. to 41. sterling, per English acre, which is certainly very considerable: бut then their management in other respects renders the culture not so cheap as it may appear at first sight, for the New England farmers practice pretty much the same system as their brethren in Canada; they have not a just idea of the importance of throwing their crops into a proper arrangement, so as one may be a preparation for another, and thereby save the barren expence of a mere fallow. Maize is a very exhausting crop; scarce anything exhausts the land more. . . Besides maize, they raise small quantities of common wheat; but it does not produce so much as one would apprehend from the great richness of the soil: . . . Barley and oats are very poor crops, yet do they cultivate both in all parts of New England: the crops are such as an English farmer, used to the husbandry of the eastern parts of the kingdom, would think not worth standing; this I attribute entirely to climate, for they have land equal to the greatest productions of those plants. Their common management of these three sorts of grain, wheat, barley, and oats, is to sow them chiefly on land that has laid fallow for two or three years, that is, left undisturbed for weeds and all sorts of trumpery to grow; though at other times they sow oats or barley after maize, which they are enabled to do by the culture they give the latter plant while it is growing: . . . Pease, beans, and tares, are sown variously through the province, but scarcely anywhere managed as they are in the well cultivated parts of the mother country. But every planter or farmer grows enough of the food for fattening hogs, for supplying his own family, and driving some fat ones to market. Hogs are throughout the province in great plenty, and very large, a considerable export from the province constantly goes on in barrelled pork, besides the vast demand there is for the fishery, and the shipping in general. Apples may be mentioned as an article of culture throughout New England, for there is no farmer, or even cottager, without a large orchard: some of them of such extent, that they make three or four hundred hogsheads of cyder a man; besides exporting immense quantities of apples from all parts of the province. The orchards in New England are reckoned as profitable as any other part of the plantation. . . . The cattle commonly kept here are the same as in Great Britain: cows, oxen, horses, sheep, and hogs; they have large dairies, which succeed quite as well as in Old England; oxen they fat to nearly as great a size; their mutton is good; and the wool which their sheep yield is long but coarse; but they manufacture it into coarse cloths, that are the common and only wear of the province, except the gentry, who purchase the fine cloths of Britain: no inconsiderable quantities of these coarse New England cloths are also exported to other colonies, to the lower people of whom, especially to the northward, they answer better than any we can send them. The horses are excellent, being the most hardy in the world; very great numbers are exported to the West-Indies, and elsewhere. ... And this mention of cattle leads me to observe, that most of the farmers in this country are, in whatever concerns cattle, the most negligent ignorant set of men in the world. Nor do I know any country in which animals are worse treated. Horses are in general, even valuable ones, worked hard, and starved: they plough, cart, and ride them to death, at the same time that they give very little heed to their food; after the hardest day's works, all the nourishment they are like to have is to be turned into a wood, where the shoots and weeds form the chief of the pasture; unless it be after the hay is in, when they get a share of the after-grass. A New Englander (and it is the same quite to Pensylvania) will ride his horse full speed twenty or thirty miles; tye him to a tree, while he does his business, then re-mount, and gallop back again. This bad treatment extends to draft oxen; to their cows, sheep, and swine; only in a different manner, as may be supposed. There is scarce any branch of rural œconomy which more demands attention and judgment than the management of cattle; or one which, under a judicious treatment, is attended with more profit to the farmers in all countries; but the New England farmers have in all this matter the worst notions imaginable. I must, in the next place, take notice of their tillage, as being weakly and insufficiently given: worse ploughing is no where to be |