g no voice.

It is well known that the very earliest population of the Old Dominion
was not of the highest, but predominantly idle and thriftless. Vagabonds
and homeless children picked up in the streets of London, as well as
some convicts, were sent to the colony from England to be indented as
servants, permanently, or for a term of years. Persons of the better
class, to be sure, came as well, and the quality of the population, on
the whole, improved year by year. Settlement here followed a centrifugal
tendency, except as this was repressed by fear of the Indians. In 1616
the departments of Virginia were Henrico, up the James above the
Appomattox mouth, West and Shirley Hundreds, Jamestown, Kiquoton, and
King's Gift on the coast near Cape Charles--a wide reach of territory to
be covered by a total population of only three hundred and fifty.

[1608]

A little exporting was immediately begun. So early as May 20, 1608,
Jamestown sent to England a ship laden with iron ore, sassafras, cedar
posts, and walnut boards. Another followed on June 2d, with a cargo all
of cedar wood. This year or the next, small quantities of pitch, tar,
and glass were sent. From 1619 tobacco was so common as to be the
currency. About 1650 it was largely exported, a million and a half
pounds, on the average, yearly. The figure had risen to twelve million
pounds by 1670. At the middle of the century, corn, wheat, rice, hemp,
flax, and fifteen varieties of fruit, as well as excellent wine were
produced. A wind-mill was set up about 1620, the first in America. It
stood at Falling Creek on the James River. The pioneer iron works on the
continent were in this colony, hailing from about the date last named.
Community of property prevailed at Jamestown in all the earliest years,
as it did at Plymouth. After the event noted by John Rolfe: "about the
last of August [1619] came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty
Negars," slavery was a continual and increasing curse, as is attested
by the laws concerning slaves. It encouraged indolence and savagery of
habit and nature. Virginian slaves, however, were better treated than
those farther south. They were tolerably clothed, fed, and housed.

[Illustration: Tobacco Plant.]

[Illustration: Captain John Smith.]

There was in Virginia little of that healthful social and political
contact which did so much to develop civilization at the North. Of town
life there was practically nothing. Even so late as 1