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>> 61 4 Abundance When the teen-aged Eliza Lucas in South Carolina described her environment to her brother, Lucas, at school in England in 1742, she extolled the very fertile soil that easily produced even European fruits and grains. “The Country,” she continued, abounds with wild fowl, Venison and fish. Beef, veal and motton are here in much greater perfection than in the Islands [West Indies], tho’ not equal to that in England; but their pork exceeds any I ever tasted any where. The Turkeys [are] extreamly fine, especially the wild, and indeed all their poultry is exceeding good; and peaches, Nectrons and melons of all sorts extreamly fine and in profusion, and their Oranges exceed any I ever tasted in the West Indies or from Spain or Portugal. What young Eliza noted about her colony was echoed in the various diaries , letters, and other commentaries written throughout the eighteenth century . Andrew Barnaby in his Travels Through the Middle Settlements in the 62 > 63 began with a breakfast of “Coffie or Jaculate [chocolate], and warm loaf bread of the best floor, we have also at Table warm loaf bread of Indian corn.” For dinner (the midday meal) he sometimes ate “smoack’d bacon or what we call pork ham [which] is a standing dish either warm or cold.” When the weather was warm they had “greens with it, and when cold we have sparrow grass [asparagus].” At other times they ate “roast pigg, Lamb, Ducks, or chickens, green pease or any thing else they fancy.” Unlike Harrrower, Andrew Barnaby noted that the Tidewater Virginians continued the “ancient [elite] custom” of eating meat at breakfast. In addition to their tea and coffee , they breakfasted on roasted fowls, ham, venison, and other game. A few years later, Jean Brillat Savarin visiting Hartford, Connecticut, was served a simpler meal of corned beef, stewed goose, and leg of mutton along with “vegetables of every description.” He drank cider with the meal and tea afterwards with the ladies. This bounty noted by eighteen-century observers was a far cry from the starvation times of the first settlements. Neither the settlers in Virginia in 1609 nor those in Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620), were prepared for the hardship of a wilderness existence. The Virginians, suspicious and contemptuous of the successful Native Americans, antagonized the most important aid to their survival by stealing from them and destroying their crops. Unable to produce enough agricultural products in a short time by themselves and unfamiliar with methods of hunting wild game or fishing, they suffered from nutritional diseases and starvation for years. It is possible that the Jamestown Virginia settlers were also beset by an additional problem of salt poisoning from drinking the brackish water of the river, a problem that was not solved until they imitated the Indians and moved farther upriver and away from Chesapeake Bay. The subsequent colonies in both Massachusetts (the Puritans beginning in 1630) and Maryland (1634) learned from those earlier experiences. None suffered the famines of their predecessors nor did the next settlers in Pennsylvania , the Carolinas, or Georgia. The areas of New York and New Jersey were already functioning colonies under the auspices of other European powers, and the other New England settlements were outgrowths of the Massachusetts colonies. None of these colonists reported difficulties in acquiring sustenance . Food was in abundance, and in a very short time it became possible to say that no one went hungry in America. There is no recorded evidence of famine such as was common in the Old World. As a result the New World population grew rapidly but unevenly. The pattern of population increase varied from region to region. In New England, with its balanced sex ratio, natural increase brought rapid growth. 64 > 65 The population grew more slowly in the South where a greater incidence of infectious diseases kept life expectancy lower, and the lack of women held down the birthrate. Doctors, of course, could do little to stem the tide of infections , and their therapies may have contributed to the death rate. The middle colonies had a more even sex ratio than in the South, but because men still outnumbered women, the birthrate was lower than in New England. From New York south to Maryland the colonies depended on a substantial immigration from various parts of Europe and Africa. By the middle of the eighteenth century , however, there was no doubt that the population in all the American colonies was growing through natural increase. Medical...

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