as soon as the spring tides began to pour their floods into the rivers and estuaries; an irresistible impulse taking possession of them, they would make for the salt water, travelling twenty and thirty miles to reach it, [sic] The planters were so familiar with this habit that they were fully aware where their herds had strayed, and at their leisure sent out slaves and servants to drive them back to their former pastures.
In the course of his sojourn in the Colony, Clayton displayed as much interest in the preservation of the cattle as in the cultivation of tobacco. According to him, the opinion prevailed among a large number of planters that to feed live stock in winter was to prepare the way for their destruction. He sought very earnestly to combat this notion as far as it was entertained by the lady with whom he resided during a part of his stay in Virginia. He urged that wheat should be sown in time for it to reach a fair size before the cold weather set in, in order that it might furnish grazing. He recommended moreover that the tops and blades of the corn-stalks, and also straw, should be laid aside as food for the cattle. No hay was now produced in the Colony as a cultivated crop; when Fitzhugh, in 1680, desired to sow a few bushels of grass seed, he was compelled to export them from England, and his attention was only directed to hay at all by the extreme depression in the price of tobacco.[1] Clayton advised his hostess to raise sanfoin, as the soil was largely composed of sand. The custom of providing no food for the horned cattle was not universal. It is probable that
- ↑ Letters of William Fitzhugh, July 1, 1680.
