Rural Economy in New England 289 



live stock owned in the town. There were one or two gardens at 

 some distance from the village, but almost all the food supply, 

 except fish, was brought from Boston. For this the inhabitants were 

 enabled to pay by the sale of cod, herring, bass, mackerel, and other 

 fish caught in the waters of the bay and on the banks of Newfound- 

 land. The annual value of the catch of the two varieties first mention- 

 tioned was over $140,000. Shipping was also an active business; 

 many of the men being employed on coasting vessels owned in Boston 

 and in neighboring towns. On the whole, the people were indus- 

 trious and lived well; many of them were even able to put by enough 

 money to purchase farms in the interior, where they spent their 

 declining years. 



Conditions on the western end of the Cape were considerably more 

 favorable to agriculture. Here, as in most coast regions of New 

 England, the inhabitants divided their energies between the sea and 

 the land. Nearly every village owned from 5 to 20, and sometimes 

 as many as 30 fishing and coasting vessels of from 40 to 70 tons. The 

 towns of Falmouth and Barnstable were especially active in maritime 

 enterprise, the former having a fleet of 50 or 60 vessels, chiefly coasters 

 of large size employed in carrying products of the Southern states 

 to New York and Boston.^ Agriculture, however, was not neglected 

 in these towns. The inhabitants cultivated their soil carefully, 

 manured it with sea-weed, and not only reaped crops sufficient for 

 their support, but had also a considerable surplus of onions, salt hay, 

 flaxseed and grain for exportation to the towns on the eastern end of 

 the Cape and to Boston. 



The evaporation of salt from sea-water was a quasi-manufacture 

 carried on in many of the towns along the Cape. In all, there were, 

 in 1802, 136 works established for this purpose. They consisted merely 

 of a series of shallow vats or tanks, into which the water from the 

 ocean was pumped by the power furnished by windmills. The salt 

 thus obtained amounted to about 100,000 bushels per annum, which 

 at that time was worth nearly $42,000. The local fisheries furnished 

 a ready market for this product.- Other works of this sort were to 



'Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., I. 8: 127-129. 



* The best description of these works, utilized largely by both Dwight and Ken- 

 dall, is to be found in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. I. 8: 135-138. Dwight entertained 

 great hopes for the future of this industry, hoping to see it extended along the 

 eastern coast of the United States "from St. Mary's to Machias." This hope 

 was, of course, disappointed by the discovery and development of the mineral 

 salt deposits in New York and other states in the following decades. Travels, III. 

 76-77. 



