BUYING WIVES WITH TOBACCO. 55 



proved very meane and is yett unsold although it hath been 

 offered at 3s. the pound. This we thought fitt to advise you 

 concerning the quantity and the manner how it is raised, in 

 both wich being done contrarie to their directors and 

 extreamly to theire prejudice, the Companie is very ill sattis- 

 fied, will write by the next, more largely." 



In the year 1620 the difficulties seem first to have been 

 publicly avowed, (though perhaps before felt,) arising from 

 attaching men as permanent settlers to the colony without 

 an adequate supply of women, to furnish the comforts of 

 domestic life; and to overcome the difficulty "a hundred 

 young women " of agreeable persons and respectable char- 

 acters, were selected in England and sent out, at the expense 

 of the Company, as wives for the settlers. They were very 

 speedily appropriated by the young men of the colony, who 

 paid for the privilege of choice considerable sums as purchase 

 money, which went to replenish the treasury of the Company, 

 from whence the cost of their outfit and passage had been 

 defrayed. 



This speculation proved so advantageous to that body, in 

 a pecuniary sense, that it was soon followed up by sending 

 out sixty more, for whom larger prices were paid than for 

 the first consignment ; the amount paid on the average for 

 the first one hundred being 120 pounds of tobacco apiece for 

 each, then valued at 3s. per lb., and for the second supply of 

 sixty, the average price paid was 150 Ibs. of tobacco, this being 

 the legal currency of the colony, and the standard value by 

 which all contracts, salaries, and prices were paid. In one of 

 the Companies letters dated in London this 12th of August, 

 1621, we find this account of a portion of the goods sent over 

 in the ship Marmaduke : 



"We send you in this ship one widdow and eleven maids 

 for wives for the people in Virginia ; there hath been especiall 

 care had in the choise of them for their hath not any one of 

 them beene received but upon good comendations, as by a 

 note herewith sent you may perceive : we pray you all there- 

 fore in generall to take them into your care, and most espe- 

 cially we recommend them to you, Mr. Pountes, that at their 

 first landing they may be housed, lodged and provided for of 

 diet till they be "marry ed for such was the haste of sending 



