it to be
our first choice?

CHAPTER VII

MEAT AND DRINK

The food brought in ships from Europe to the colonists was naturally
limited by the imperfect methods of transportation which then existed.
Nothing like refrigerators were known; no tinned foods were even thought
of; ways of packing were very crude and careless; so the kinds of
provisions which would stand the long voyage on a slow sailing-vessel
were very few. The settlers turned at once, as all settlers in a new
land should, to the food-supplies found in the new home; of these the
three most important ones were corn, fish, and game. I have told of
their plenty, their value, and their use. There were many other
bountiful and good foods, among them pumpkins or pompions, as they were
at first called.

The pumpkin has sturdily kept its own place on the New England farm,
varying in popularity and use, but always of value as easy of growth,
easy of cooking, and easy to keep in a dried form. Yet the colonists did
not welcome the pumpkin with eagerness, even in times of great want.
They were justly rebuked for their indifference and dislike by Johnson
in his _Wonder-working Providence_, who called the pumpkin "a fruit
which the Lord fed his people with till corn and cattle increased"; and
another pumpkin-lover referred to "the times wherein old Pompion was a
saint." One colonial poet gives the golden vegetable this tribute:--

"We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins we should be undone."

I am very sure were I living on dried corn and scant shell-fish, as the
Pilgrims were forced to do, I should have turned with delight to
"pompion-sause" as a change of diet. Stewed pumpkins and pumpkin bread
were coarse ways of using the fruit for food. Pumpkin bread--made of
half Indian meal--was not very pleasing in appearance. A traveller in
1704 called it an "awkward food." It is eaten in Connecticut to this
day. The Indians dried pumpkins and strung them for winter use, and the
colonists followed the Indian custom.

In Virginia pumpkins were equally plentiful and useful. Ralph Hamor, in
his _True Discourse_, says they grew in such abundance that a hundred
were often observed to spring from one seed. The Virginia Indians boiled
beans, peas, corn, and pumpkins together, and the colonists liked the
dish. In the trying times at "James-Citty," the plentiful pumpkins
played a great part in providing food-supplies for the s