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 yur 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 marryed for such was the haste of sending 
