Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/338

 was sold for twenty shillings an hundred pounds. It illustrates the sudden changes taking place in the condition of the planters according as their crops for a single year flourished or failed, that in 1636, two years after the large shipments of grain to New England, corn was so dear in Virginia, that it was only to be bought at twenty shillings a bushel, a large number of the poorer inhabitants being reduced for subsistence to purslane and other garden vegetables. At a somewhat later period, Devries, who was acquainted by actual experience with these sudden fluctuations in the annual fortunes of the people, warned one of his countrymen, who proposed to make a trading voyage to the Colony, that it would be prudent for him to carry with him ample provisions,as the planters of Vir- ginia produced supplies sufficient only for themselves.

During the first part of the term of Governor Harvey, the palisade, which, a few years before, Mathews and Claiborne had proposed to erect from Martin&#8217;s Hundred to a point on the York, was built, thus establishing at the lower end of the peninsula between the two rivers, a secure refuge for live stock, covering ground almost as extensive as the county of Kent in England. Within the boundaries of this range, the cattle wandered at liberty, finding their food in wood, marsh, and field during every season. If fed at all in winter, they received only the husks of maize with a few grains. The Indians hardly dared