are every
where, which yield beef, veal, milk, butter, cheese and other made
dishes, porke, bacon and pigs, and that as sweet and savoury meat as the
world affords, these with the help of Orchards and Gardens, Oysters,
Fish, Fowle and Venison, certainly cannot but be sufficient for a good
diet and wholsom accommodation, considering how plentifully they are,
and how easie with industry to be had."[6-13]

But the little planter, with the advent of the Navigation Acts, often
suffered keenly from a lack of adequate clothing. Again and again the
letters of the period state that the poor man was reduced to rags, that
he could not protect his family from the winter's cold. There was some
manufacture of cloth in the home, but the planter usually trusted to the
foreign trader to bring him every article of clothing. He had neither
the implements nor the skill to supply his own needs. During the
Restoration period, and again at the time of the war of the Spanish
Succession, when the price of tobacco fell so very low, many families
succeeded in producing enough homespun to supply their most pressing
needs.[6-14] But with the return of better conditions they laid aside
the loom and the wheel, and resumed their purchase of English cloth.

In normal times the poor planter was comfortably clad. Edward Williams,
in _Virginia Richly Valued_, advised every new immigrant to bring a
monmouth cap, a waistcoat, a suit of canvas, with bands, shirts,
stockings and shoes.[6-15] The author of _New Albion_ thought that each
adventurer should provide himself with canvas or linen clothes, with
shoes and a hat.[6-16]

The houses of the small planters were small but comfortable. "Pleasant
in their building," says John Hammond, "which although for most part
they are but one story besides the loft, and built of wood, yet
contrived so delightfully that your ordinary houses in England are not
so handsome, for usually the rooms are large, daubed and whitelimed,
glazed and flowered, and if not glazed windows, shutters which are made
very pritty and convenient."[6-17] _The New Description of Virginia_,
published in 1649, says: "They have Lime in abundance for their houses,
store of bricks made, and House and Chimnies built of Brick, and some of
Wood high and fair, covered with Shingell for Tyle."[6-18]

In the days of the Company most of the houses seem to have been made of
logs, and Butler, in his _Virginia Unmasked_, declared that they were
the "worst