governors and of the Indians
to restrain them decreased, however, they tended to leave the organized
communities and to carve out for themselves individual plantations in
the wilderness. Thus, even while the population of the colony grew by
leaps and bounds, the population of Jamestown and other areas where
population was once concentrated declined. It was a process, one might
call it, of de-urbanization.

What was it that reversed the process of urbanization that was going on
in the mother country? The attraction was, of course, the land and its
fruits. England, with her five or six millions, was not overpopulated by
modern standards. Nor was she overpopulated by comparison with the great
nations of the Orient such as China which could even in that period
count its population in the hundreds of millions. But her few millions
seemed at times to oppress the English soil. On the other hand, America
was a relatively new home of the human species. Perhaps less than a
million Indians lived within the present bounds of the United States,
and the Indians with whom the English in Virginia came in contact
numbered less than 10,000. "In the beginning all the world was America,"
wrote John Locke, and the English townsmen, villagers, and yeomen who
came to America found it natural to revert back to the time when Adam
went forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was
taken. It would be more truthful to say, however, that the English went
not so much in sorrow as in confidence, as the sons of Abraham to whom
God had promised all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.

Tobacco was the richest fruit of the land. Despite the moral opprobrium
in which the "vile, stinking weed" was held by men in England, including
King James himself, the public soon developed an insatiable appetite for
it. Having for the Europeans the attraction of novelty and utility, it
commanded an enormous price in the early years of the settlement. With
Spanish tobacco selling at eighteen shillings a pound in 1619, the
opportunities for gain from tobacco production seemed unlimited. Here
was the "gold" that Virginia had to offer, and soon all hands could
think of nothing else. The earliest settlers, hoping to emulate the
Spaniards in finding great treasures and living off the labor of the
Indians, had suffered bitterly from shortages of food. Later settlers,
though they did not hold to the expectations of the first arrivals,
still