Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/368

 being extremely slow, because the implements employed were still the immemorial sickle and hook. Where the grain was trodden out by oxen, it required a fortnight to finish the threshing, and as much as ten weeks if other means were used. The average amount of wheat to be produced to an acre was computed at five quarters, while for the same area there were expected three hundred stone of flax, in addition to fifteen bushels of flaxseed. From twenty acres of wheat one hundred quarters would be reaped, which, at twenty shillings a quarter, would signify a return of one hundred pounds sterling. Three acres in flax would yield on an average nine hundred stone, which, valued at the rate of one shilling and four pence a stone, the price it commanded at this time in the English market, would ensure sixty pounds sterling, to which should be added twelve pounds for the forty-eight bushels of seed that this number of acres sowed in flax would produce. The twenty acres would thus bring forth crops of a salable value of one hundred and seventy-two pounds sterling.

Bullock, to whom I am indebted for these details, believed from his own personal observation at this period, that there was no country offering more numerous opportunities than Virginia to a man of industry, to improve his condition in life. He dwells upon the hypothetical instance of a small planter recently established in the Colony, who sends to England a cargo of tobacco valued at one hundred pounds sterling, representing what remains to him as profit after the payment of all the expenses of his agricultural operations during the previous twelve months. The sum coming to him from its sale is disposed of by his agent in the mother country under, instructions from him as follows: fifty pounds sterling in buying clothing for six men who had been