enough in all
conscience, but "Dale's Laws" went beyond. Offences ranged from failure
to attend church and idleness to lese majeste. The penalties were
gross--cruel whippings, imprisonments, barbarous puttings to death. The
High Marshal held the unruly down with a high hand.

But other factors than this Draconian code worked at last toward order
in this English West. Dale was no small statesman, and he played ferment
against ferment. Into Virginia now first came private ownership of land.
So much was given to each colonist, and care of this booty became
to each a preoccupation. The Company at home sent out more and more
settlers, and more and more of the industrious, peace-loving sort. By
1612 the English in America numbered about eight hundred. Dale projected
another town, and chose for its site the great horseshoe bend in the
river a few miles below the Falls of the Far West, at a spot we now call
Dutch Gap. Here Dale laid out a town which he named Henricus after the
Prince of Wales, and for its citizens he drafted from Jamestown three
hundred persons. To him also are due Bermuda and Shirley Hundreds and
Dale's Gift over on the Eastern Shore. As the Company sent over more
colonists, there began to show, up and down the James though at far
intervals, cabins and clearings made by white men, set about with a
stockade, and at the river edge a rude landing and a fastened boat. The
restless search for mines of gold and silver now slackened. Instead eyes
turned for wealth to the kingdom of the plant and tree, and to fur trade
and fisheries.

* Hitherto there had been no trading or landholding by
individuals. All the colonists contributed the products of
their toil to the common store and received their supplies
from the Company. The adventurers (stockholders) contributed
money to the enterprise; the colonists, themselves and their
labor.

Those ships that brought colonists were in every instance expected
to return to England laden with the commodities of Virginia. At first
cargoes of precious ores were looked for. These failing, the Company
must take from Virginia what lay at hand and what might be suited to
English needs. In 1610 the Company issued a paper of instructions upon
this subject of Virginia commodities. The daughter was expected to
send to the mother country sassafras root, bay berries, puccoon,
sarsaparilla, walnut, chestnut, and chinquapin oil, wine, silk grass,
beaver cod, bea