Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/337

Rh agricultural operations to the cultivation of English grain and vines.

The shipments to the North were not confied to grain; the commissions granted to Nathaniel Basse and others, in 1631, instructed them to offer for sale in the coun- tries with which they were authorized to trade, cows, oxen. hogs, and goats at favorable rates. Devries has recorded that, in 1633, he met Captain Stone making his way from Virginia towards New England, with a cargo of grain and young cattle; a few years later, Samuel Maverick, of Massachusetts, visited the Colony, and purchased four heifers and eighty goats, which he conveyed to Boston in two pinnaces. So numerous had the hogs, goats, and poultry become by the fourth year of Governor Harvey's administration, that the planters were able to furnish large supplies of meat to the crews of ships lying at anchor in the river. The vessels engaged in the transportation of tobacco offered, even at this time, an important market, as may be inferred from the fact that they numbered from thirty to forty, manned by many sailors, the tomnage ranging from four hundred upwards. When Devries arrived in the James, in the autumn of 1635, he found ihirty-six sail at Blunt Point alone. At this time, pork