, very nice and different from ours)
with other roots and pulse, are their general food."

The cultivation of tobacco increased with the growth of the colony and
the increase of price which at this time was sufficient to induce most
of the planters to neglect the culture of Corn and Wheat, devoting
their time to growing their "darling tobacco." The first thirty years
after the colonization of Virginia by the English, the colony made but
little progress owing in part to private factions and Indian wars. The
horrid massacres by the Indians threatened the extermination of the
colony, and for a time the plantations were neglected and even tobacco
became more of an article of import than of export, which is
substantiated by an early writer of the colony who says:--"A vast
quantity of tobacco is consumed in the country in smoking, chewing,
and snuff." Frequent complaints were made by the colony of want of
strength and danger of imminent famine, owing in part to the presence
of a greater number of adventurers than of actual settlers,--such
being the case the resources of the country were in a measure limited.

The demand for tobacco in England increasing each year, together with
the high price paid for that from Virginia (3 s. per lb.), stimulated
the planters to hazard all their time and labor upon one crop,
neglecting the cultivation of the smaller grains, intent only upon
curing "a good store of tobacco." The company of adventurers at length
found it necessary to check the excessive planting of the weed, and by
the consent of the "Generall Assemblie" restraining the plantations to
"one hundred plants[15] ye headd, uppon each of wich plantes there are
to bee left butt onely nyne leaves wich portions as neare as could be
guessed, was generally conceaved would be agreable with the hundred
waight you have allowed."

[Footnote 15: Another account is sixty pounds per head.]

In 1639 the "Grand Assembly" (summoned the sixth of January) passed a
law restricting the growth of the colony to 1,500,000 lbs., and to
1,200,000 in the two years next ensuing. The exporting of the poorer
qualities of tobacco by the colony caused much dissatisfaction as will
be seen by a letter of the Company dated 11th September, 1621:

"We are assured from our Factor in Holland that except the
tobacco that shall next come thence prove to be of more
perfection and goodnesse than that was sent home last, there
is n