THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 387 



country is well watered, and with different water from that of 

 England ; " not so sharpe, of a fatty substance, and of a more 

 jetty colour. It is thought that there can be no better water in 

 the world ; yet dare I not pref erre it to good Beere as some have 

 done. Those that drinke it be as healthful, fresh, and lustie as 

 they that drinke beere." 



By 1631 they had passed a law for putting drunkards in the 

 stocks ; other laws followed concerning adulterations, sale to sav- 

 ages, etc. In 1634 the price of an "ale quart of beere" was set at 

 a penny, and brew houses were soon in every village, in some 

 places attached to every farm. The manufacture of other drinks 

 followed rapidly, and in Judge Sewall's diary, some forty or fifty 

 years later, we find mention of ale, beer, mead, metheglin, cider, 

 wine, sillabub, claret, sack, canary, punch, sack posset, and black 

 cherry brandy. The commonest of all these was " cyder," which 

 was produced in enormous quantities and drunk very freely. 

 Sack was passing out of date, excepting in posset, a delectable 

 mixture of wine, ale, eggs, cream, and spices, boiled together. 

 Metheglin and mead were brewed from one part of honey and 

 two or two and a half parts of water and spices, fermented with 

 yeast, and very heady liquors they were. The least excess, as 

 they used to say, would bring back the humming of the bees in 

 the ears. Governor Bradford early issued one of his orders 

 against some " Merrymount scamps " on board the bark Friend- 

 ship, who took two barrels of metheglin from Boston to Plym- 

 outh, and " dranke up, under the name leakage, all but six gal- 

 lons." 



But none of these, nor the " beveridge " and " swizzle " made 

 from molasses and water, the perry, peachy, spruce and birch 

 beer, and the rest, did half as much execution as rum. This was 

 introduced from Barbadoes about 1650, and from then on became 

 practically the national drink of the country. A great trade was 

 set up with the West Indies, the ships exporting corn and pork 

 and lumber for the plantations, and returning with cargoes of 

 raw sugar and molasses, which last was almost valueless where it 

 was made, but, diluted and fermented, furnished a ready source 

 of alcohol. 



Every little Now England town and village had its distillery 

 the seaport towns had scores of them and the rum bullion, 

 rumbooze, or, as it was universally known, killdivil, was sold 

 freely for two shillings a gallon, and was shipped largely to the 

 African coast in exchange for slaves. It was to this profitable 

 trade that Newport and other New England coast towns owed 

 their prosperity, and the interference with this trade by the 

 English Commerce Acts was one of the main causes of the 

 Revolution. 



