3 86 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Commons when Pitt and his friend Dundas came staggering in, 

 and Pitt says : " I can not see the Speaker, Dick ; can you ? " 

 " Not see the Speaker ? Hang it, I see ttvo." And all through the 

 regency and well on through the next reign until the accession of 

 the young Queen, there prevailed what to us would seem unpar- 

 donable license. 



But it must not be inferred from this that drinking was much 

 more prevalent in England than in other parts of the world at 

 the same periods. Indeed, the records of Germany and Holland 

 show quite as startling pictures. And in our own country we 

 have not much to boast of. 



The North American Indians were, on the whole, unaccus- 

 tomed to alcoholic beverages before the arrival of the white man. 

 Tobacco they had, and used it freely. In some stray localities we 

 read of drinks made from maize ; and from the reports of Cap- 

 tains Amadas and Barlow to Sir Walter Raleigh about the expe- 

 dition to Virginia in 1584, we find that the Indians along the 

 coast of Chesapeake Bay and the Carolinas had learned the art 

 of making wine from grapes. But when the Puritans landed in 

 Massachusetts in 1620 they found, to their disgust, that beer and 

 wine were both lacking, and we find Governor Bradford com- 

 plaining bitterly of the hardship of drinking water. 



Nor was water a more favored beverage among the settlers 

 of Massachusetts Bay eight or ten years later. The first list of 

 necessities sent back to the home company, in 1629, is headed, as 

 our New England friends have so frequently reminded us, by an 

 appeal for " ministers," and for a " patent under seale." We do 

 not hear so often of their request, only a line or two further 

 down, for " vyne planters." They ask for wheat, rye, barley, and 

 other grains, and also for " hop rootes." 



The records are still kept of the equipment of the vessel sent 

 out in answer to this appeal. It was provisioned for one hundred 

 passengers and thirty-five sailors for three months, each sailor 

 counting as much as two passengers. They provided for the 

 voyage " forty-five tuns beere, at four and six shillings per tun ; 

 two caskes Mallega and Canarie at sixteen shillings ; twenty gal- 

 lons aqua vitse," and for drinking, cooking, and all, only six 

 tuns of water ! 



Higginson, the well-known first minister, went out in 1628. 

 The next year he wrote home a glowing account of the country. 

 Among other things, the air was so fine that his health was greatly 

 benefited. "And whereas my stomache could only digest and 

 did require such drinke as was both strong and stale, now I can 

 and doe oftentimes drinke New England water verie well." 



This really remarkable fact we find explained a few years 

 after by Wood, in his New England's Prospect. He says that the 



