550 A. E. Verrill — The Bermuda Islands. 



The wild hogs and birds were rapidly destroyed by the famished 

 people. Another famine occurred in the third winter (1614-1615), 

 when 150 starving people were colonized temporarily on Cooper's 

 Island to feed on the cahow and its eggs, which they nearly exter- 

 minated that season. (See history of the Cahow, Part III, ch. 29.) 



A gi'eat curse to the colony, from the first, was the large amount 

 of liquors sent out on every vessel, for many years, by the Company, 

 in order, apparently, to exchange it, at high pi-ices, for the half- 

 shares of tobacco that belonged to the cultivators. Many of the 

 colonists were taken from the lowest classes of people in London, 

 and drunkenness was prevalent among these and others, whenever, 

 by any means, they could secure liquors of any kind.* Such condi- 

 tions were not confined to Bermuda, nor to that particular time, but 

 in this case the Company could have controlled it, had they chosen 

 to do so, for a long series of years. Governor Butler and other 

 early governors denounced the custom in the strongest terms, as did 

 some of the clergymen, but it was continued and gave rise to vari- 



* The Eev. Mr. Hughes, writing in 1620, alludes to this as follows : 

 " My heart giveth rne, that among other sinnes, the abominable sinne of 

 Drunkennesse, that aboundeth among you every shipping time did much favour the 

 bringing of that judgement upon her, [the ship] to admonish some to bee no 

 longer Bawds to Drunkennesse by sending over so much Aqua vitas." ... "In 

 Summerset you know how one died suddenly with drinking himself dead 

 drunke." ..." Also in the Towne at St. Georges, a man of Summerset drunke 

 himself dead drunke, and beeing by a Coroner's Inquest found guilty of his 

 owne death, was by the commandment of Captaine Butler your Governour, 

 buried in the highway with a stake driven through him, by them in whose 

 company he dranke himself dead. Each of them having a paper on his backe 

 with this superscription : ' These are the companions of him which killed himselfe 

 with drinking.'' Two of the most notorious of them were punished, the one 

 whipped at the Whipping Post, the other (because he was a soldier) did ride 

 the Cannon, shot off full charged, which did shake him terribly." 



"Forget not the Boats of Summerset that were over-turned with the keele 

 upward, and some of the men drowned, because they that should guide them, 

 were troubled in their braines with Aqua vitae." 



Governor Butler thus describes the drinking habits of the people, in 1620 : — 

 "And, indeed, it is incredibly straunge to report what a huge quantitie of 

 thes hott composed waters are (mis) spent yearely in these smale Hands. Will 

 it ever be believed (in England it selfe, which is yet too neere akinne to Ger- 

 many in this ; in Spaine and Italy certainely it can never) that twelve hundred 

 persons (whereof the one half e almost are women and children, and soe noe 

 drinckers in this nature) should in three months space only, consume and 

 emptye two thousand gallons of this hartburneinge geare, bypowreinge it downe 

 into their vast mawes ? And yet this is the least that (truely) can be sayd of it." 



