I20 



1631, Winthrop says "arrived ships bringing along all 

 sorts of cattle, which with the blessing of heaven so in- 

 creased that within a few years, the inhabitants were 

 furnished not only with enough for their own use but 

 were able to supply other places." In 16 33,5" farmers ^^^ 

 large stock of cattle, sheep and goats, the cattle were fed 

 in one drove and guarded by a man called a "hay ward." 



In 1635 two Dutch schooners brought in twenty-seven 

 Flanders mares, sixty-three heifers and eighty-eight sheep. 

 Winthrop says "It was hoped that these Netherland 

 cattle, with the large yellow Danish cattle imported into 

 the Piscataqua province by Gorges some years earlier, 

 would increase the size of the Devon cattle brought by 

 the English colonists. 



"The sheep, goats and swine were kept on Nahant, 

 which had been sold to Thomas Dexter for a sheep pas- 

 ture by Poquannon, or "Black Will", as he was called, 

 Sachem of Nahant; the settlers built a high fence of 

 rails put close together across the beach near Nahant, 

 to keep out the wolves, as those animals don't climb." 

 Black Will was killed in 1633, so that Nahant must, ac- 

 cording to the old records, have been a well stocked pas- 

 ture for sheep, goats and hogs, before that date. 



Importations of sheep are not mentioned often, they 

 were few in number, and were probably darkfaced from 

 Sussex and Hampshire along the south coast from which 

 our ancestors sailed. 



The large white faced sheep were mostly brought from 

 the Texel and other ports of Holland. Swine are seldom 

 noticed as being brought in, but they had bred so fast as 

 to become at times almost a nuisance; the colonial 

 statutes are full for a hundred years of restrictions on 

 swine, ringing, j^oking, enclosing, or shooting when do- 

 ing damage. It seems they were troublesome to the 

 fisherman, distroying the fish flakes, eating and trampling 

 the fish, so that in 1633 it was ordered "that any swine 

 coming within a quarter of a mile of the fishing stage at 

 "Marble Harbor," shall be forfeited to the^ owner of the 



