ctures would have
flourished greatly; even as it was, iron and paper were manufactured in
considerable quantities.

%100. Occupations in the Southern Colonies.%--South of Pennsylvania,
and especially south of the Potomac River, lay a region utterly unlike
anything to the north of it. In Virginia, there were no cities, no large
towns, no centers of population. At an early day in the history of the
colony the legislature had attempted to remedy this, and had ordered
towns to be built at certain places, had made them the only ports where
ships from abroad could be entered, had established tobacco warehouses
in them, had offered special privileges to tradesmen who would settle in
them, and had provided that each should have a market and a fair. But
the success was small, and Fredericksburg and Alexandria and Petersburg
were straggling villages. Jamestown, the old capital, had by this time
ceased to exist. Williamsburg, the new capital, was a village of 200
houses. There was no business, no incentive in Virginia to build towns.
The planters owned immense plantations along the river banks, and raised
tobacco, which, when gathered, cured, and packed into hogsheads, was
rolled away to the nearest wharf for inspection and shipment to London.
In those early days, when good roads were unknown and wagons few, shafts
were attached to each hogshead by iron bolts driven into the heads, and
the cask was thus turned into a huge roller. With each year's crop would
go a long list of articles of every sort,--hardware, glass, crockery,
clothing, furniture, household utensils, wines,--which the agent was
instructed to buy with the proceeds of the tobacco and send back to the
planter when the ships came a year later for another crop. The country
abounded in trees, yet tables, chairs, boxes, cart wheels, bowls, birch
brooms, all came from the mother country. The wood used for building
houses was actually cut, sent to England as logs to be dressed, and then
taken back to Virginia for use.

[Illustration: Tobacco rolling[1]]

[Footnote 1: From a model in the National Museum, Washington.]

Maryland was in the same condition. Her people raised tobacco, and with
it bought their clothing, household goods, brass and copper wares, and
iron utensils in Great Britain.

In South Carolina rice was the great staple, just as tobacco was the
staple of Virginia, and there too were large plantations and no towns.
All the social, commercial, legal, and pol