VIRGINIA 35 



hauled over long and difficult roads to the places where 

 it can be received by the European ships. In this re- 

 gion a great quantity of tobacco had been ruined by a 

 frost in the month of August past, and it has been 

 learned that in the back parts of Carolina a similar 

 damage was done at the same time. This happens here 

 and there so much the more easily because many plan- 

 ters raise nothing but the Sweet-scented Tobacco, 

 which is a smaller and tenderer plant, but brings two 

 and a half shillings more in the hundred, or 25 shillings 

 Virgin. Current the hogshead. 



We spent a night at a plantation where, according to 

 the custom here, travellers are lodged for a price, under 

 the style of ' Private Entertainment,' but no tavern is 

 kept. In the item of public houses Virginia and the 

 other southern provinces are worse off than the north- 

 ern. The distinction between Private and Public En- 

 tertainment is to the advantage of the people who keep 

 the so-called Private houses, they avoiding in this way 

 the tax for permission to dispense rum and other drinks 

 and not being plagued with noisy drinking-parties. 

 Other public houses lacking, travellers are compelled 

 to seek out these and glad to find them. Here, one eats 

 with the family both thick and thin homany (a prepara- 

 tion of Indian corn), drinks water at pleasure, is not 

 free to demand and has no right to expect what he 

 wants, but pays quite as much as elsewhere, in houses 

 where he lives as he pleases, is better served, and not 

 obliged on coming and going to be very grateful for 

 the reception. On the other hand, it must be said for 

 these ' private houses ' that in them one has to submit 

 to a general interrogation but once, on the part of the 

 family, whereas in the taverns every person coming in 



