, and of which there exist a number of narratives, some of them
anonymous, and only rescued from a manuscript condition a hundred years
after the event. Another part is concerned with the explorations of
new territory. Such were the "Westover Manuscripts," left by Colonel
William Byrd, who was appointed in 1729 one of the commissioners to fix
the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina, and gave an account
of the survey in his _History of the Dividing Line_, which was printed
only in 1841. Colonel Byrd is one of the most brilliant figures of
colonial Virginia, and a type of the Old Virginia gentleman. He had
been sent to England for his education, where he was admitted to the
bar of the Middle Temple, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and
formed an intimate friendship with Charles Boyle, the Earl of Orrery.
He held many offices in the government of the colony, and founded the
cities of Richmond and Petersburg. His estates were large, and at
Westover--where he had one of the finest private libraries in
America--he exercised a baronial hospitality, blending the usual
profusion of plantation life with the elegance of a traveled scholar
and "picked man of countries." Colonel Byrd was rather an amateur in
literature. His _History of the Dividing Line_ is written with a
jocularity which rises occasionally into real humor, and which gives to
the painful journey through the wilderness the air of a holiday
expedition. Similar in tone were his diaries of _A Progress to the
Mines_ and _A Journey to the Land of Eden_ in North Carolina.

The first formal historian of Virginia was Robert Beverly, "a native
and inhabitant of the place," whose _History of Virginia_ was printed
at London in 1705. Beverly was a rich planter and large slave-owner,
who, being in London in 1703, was shown by his bookseller the
manuscript of a forthcoming work, Oldmixon's _British Empire in
America_. Beverly was set upon writing his history by the inaccuracies
in this, and likewise because the province "has been so misrepresented
to the common people of England as to make them believe that the
servants in Virginia are made to draw in cart and plow, and that the
country turns all people black"--an impression which lingers still in
parts of Europe. The most original portions of the book are those in
which the author puts down his personal observations of the plants and
animals of the New World, and particularly the account of the Indians,