[Continuing William Byrd's account of his conversation with Mr. Chiswell on 23 & 24 September 1732.]
"That if these circumstances should happily occur, and you could procure honest colliers and firemen, which will be difficult to do, you may easily run eight hundred tons of sow iron a year. The whole charge of freight, custom, commission, and other expenses in England, will not exceed 30s. [shillings] a ton, and 'twill commonly sell for £6, and then the clear profit will amount to £4 10s. So that allowing 10s. for accidents, you may reasonably expect a clear profit of £4, which being multiplied by eight hundred, will amount to £3,200 a year, to pay you for your land and Negroes. But then it behooved me to be fully informed of the whole matter myself, to prevent being imposed upon and if any offered to put tricks upon me, to punish them as they deserve.
"Thus ended our conversation for this day, and I retired to a very clean lodging in another house and took my bark, but was forced to take it in water, by reason a light-fingered damsel had ransacked my baggage and drank up my brandy. This unhappy girl, it seems, is a baronet's daughter; but her complexion, being red-haired, inclined her so much to lewdness that her father sent her, under the care of the virtuous Mr. Cheep, to seek her fortune on this side of the globe.
"24 [of September]. My friend Mr. Chiswell made me reparation for the robbery of his servant by filing my bottle again with good brandy.
"It being Sunday, I made a motion for going to church to see the growth of the parish, but unluckily the sermon happened to be at the chapel, which was too far off. [Parishes were so large that auxiliary chapels were established where the people who lived at a remote distance could go to church.] I was unwilling to tire my friend with any farther discourse upon iron and therefore turned the conversation to other subjects. And talking of management, he let me into two secrets worth remembering. He said the quickest way in the world to stop the fermentation of any liquor was to keep a lighted match of brimstone under the cask for some time. This is useful in a so warm a country as this, where cider is apt to work itself off both of its strength and sweetness. The other secret was to keep weevils out of wheat and other grain. You have nothing to do, said he, but to put a bag of pepper into every heap or cask, which those insects have such an antipathy to that they will not approach it. These receipts he gave to me, not upon report, but upon his own repeated experience. He farther told me he had brewed as good ale of malt made of Indian corn as ever he tasted; all the objection was he could neither by art or standing ever bring it to be fine in the cask. The quantity of corn he employed in brewing a cask of forty gallons was two bushels and a half, which made it very strong and pleasant."
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.