Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/286

 on one occasion a colonist who had committed a robbery upon the store was bound to a tree and suffered to perish by starvation. Culprits of this kind, it is probable, were usually hung, the harshness in this special case being doubtless exemplary. In order to put an end to the serious evils resulting from the unlicensed trading between the sailors on the ships arriving in the James River, and the colonists on shore, the seamen bartering cheese and biscuit, meal, bacon, oil, butter, spice, and aquavit&aelig; for the clothing, furniture, instruments, tools, and implements of the settlers, it was provided that all mariners who made this exchange should not only be deprived of the goods thus obtained and forfeit the entire amount of their wages, but should also be publicly whipped according to the verdict of the court-martial which should find the charge to be true. If the exchange had been at an unconscionable price, advantage being taken of the necessities of the inhabitants, death was to be the punishment. Proclamations setting forth the legal rates in the sale of all commodities were attached to the masts of every vessel that arrived, and this was to be taken as sufficient notice of the consequences of an extreme violation of the law, but it was, at the same time, no justification for buying without authority the articles specified, even at approved valuations. In spite of the more careful administration enforced by Gates and Dale, there appears to have been at times a great lack of necessary supplies. Molina, writing in 1613, after a detention of two years in Virginia, refers to the wretched clothing of the colonists. He describes his own dress as being