0. Usefulness of the woods, 263
101. Indolence of the inhabitants, 263

THE PREFACE.

My first business in the world being among the public records of my
country, the active thoughts of my youth put me upon taking notes of the
general administration of the government; but with no other design, than
the gratification of my own inquisitive mind; these lay by me for many
years afterwards, obscure and secret, and would forever have done so,
had not the following accident produced them:

In the year 1703, my affairs calling me to England, I was soon after my
arrival, complimented by my bookseller with an intimation, that there
was prepared for printing a general account of all her majesty's
plantations in America, and his desire, that I would overlook it before
it was put to the press; I agreed to overlook that part of it which
related to Virginia.

Soon after this he brings me about six sheets of paper written, which
contained the account of Virginia and Carolina. This it seems was to
have answered a part of Mr. Oldmixion's British Empire in America. I
very innocently, (when I began to read,) placed pen and paper by me, and
made my observations upon the first page, but found it in the sequel so
very faulty, and an abridgement only of some accounts that had been
printed sixty or seventy years ago; in which also he had chosen the most
strange and untrue parts, and left out the more sincere and faithful, so
that I laid aside all thoughts of further observations, and gave it only
a reading; and my bookseller for answer, that the account was too faulty
and too imperfect to be mended; withal telling him, that seeing I had in
my junior days taken some notes of the government, which I then had with
me in England, I would make him an account of my own country, if I could
find time, while I staid in London. And this I should the rather
undertake in justice to so fine a country, because it 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 as
horses and oxen do in England, and that the country turns all people
black who go to live there, with other such prodigious phantasms.

Accordingly, before I left London, I gave him a short history of the
country, from the first settlement, with an account of its then state;
but I would not let him mingle it with Oldm