The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-02-11


 in the seventeenth century. There fore, many houses of well-to-do squires and farmers were made of a framework of wood filled in with plaster and then white washed. The best of the dwellings had plastered walls and board floors, although both boards and plaster were expensive, and the poorer sort of houses among the yeomanry had floors of clay and walls of upholstered clay or brick.
 AS for the house furnishing of the middle class, it varied according to their means, and among the richer, part of them almost rivalled that of the gentle folks in luxury.
 Up to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the country people, even the well-to- do farmers had been content with very simple furnishing. They slept on a straw bed with a block of wood for a pillow; feather-bed was a luxury which must be reserved for women and sick persons.
 But by the beginning of the seven- teenth century the richer farmers and merchants had two, even three, feath- er-beds each, and their bedsteads were hung with curtains of woollen stuff, sometimes even of silk. Their tables were covered with cloths of woollen, "carpets," they called them, for linen table, cloths were as yet unused. The wooden trenchers and spoons of wood were sent to the servants tables, and dishes of glittering pewter, with pewter spoons, adorned the tables on feast days.
 The inhabitants of the British Isles have always been good feeders, and animal food was always plentiful there. The leaders of the nobility were filled ill King James, time with beef, mutton, veal, lamb, pork, capon, and other meats, also great varieties of fowl, fish, and small birds. The lesser gentry were content with one or two dishes of meat, except when they had guests; while the yeomanry had only one, except on feast days.
 But the lower order or laborers fared poorly. Their bread was made of wheat bran or of oats or barley. Indeed, fine wheat bread, the "man- chet loaf," it was called, was hardly seen except among the nobility.
 With all this plenty of flesh foods, vegetables were both scarce and dear. England, which is now such garden, was not skilled in gardening when our forefathers settled in America. Up to the seventeenth century, nearly all the common vegetables cabbages, cauliflowers, turnips, carrots-came from gardens of the thrifty Dutch in Holland, and about that time some of these Dutch gardeners came to Eng land, hired bit of land at high rate, and began to teach the art of market gardening in England.
 Englishmen not only had their garden-stuff from Holland at this time, but cherries from Flanders, ap- ples from France, and hops, even hops for their beer, from the Nether- lands.
 If market gardening was in SO crude a state, the knowledge of land-man agement and drainage was very little better. Essex county was so badly drained that fever and ague ragged there. Lincolnshire, whence came so large an emigration to the Massachu- setts Bay Colony, was covered with marshes, and great deal of the land was under water half the year and very unhealthy. It was also in con- stant danger of devastating floods, such floods as Jean Ingelow describes as taking place there in her poem of "The High Tide on the Coast of Lin colnshire."
 In Charles the First's reign, Hol- lander made contract to build dikes on the coast and to drain the land. He was to have percentage of all the acres his labors made arabic, for it was useless as it was then.
 When, by an intelligent system of drainage, he had reclaimed much use- less land, the country people, indig- nant that foreigner should become so large a property holder among them, mobbed his works, tore up his dikes, and flood-gates, demolished and filled up his ditches, destroyed his barns, and the crops already planted. The farming tools were of the rudest sort. A wooden blow with a clumsy knife to cut the soil, a wooden fork, spade, hoe and fail were the whole stock of farming implements in rural England long after the colonies were settled in America.
 think have said enough to show that, rude and hard as was the life of a pioneer settler in America, he did not find it so severe change to come to new country abounding in wild game, in wild vegetables and fruits, in sweet waters, and fertile land, as he would find it to leave the luxurious English towns or country at this present time.
 There was a rude plenty there, and, 0 0wrNr h@ sNl,