ded
until it absorbed the whole attention at West and Shirley Hundreds and
Jamestown.

[Illustration: _TOBACCO at Jamestown--1600's_
Courtesy of Sidney E. King]

The first general planting in the colony began at West and Shirley
Hundreds where twenty-five men, commanded by a Captain Madison, were
employed solely in planting and curing tobacco. In 1616 the tobacco
fever struck furiously in Jamestown. The following description
indicates the impact of the "fever": there were "but five or six
houses, the church downe, the palizado's broken, the bridge in pieces,
the well of fresh water spoiled; the storehouse used for the church...,
[and] the colony dispersed all about, planting tobacco." The "Noxious
weed" was even growing in the streets and in the market place.

By 1622 plantations extended at intervals from Point Comfort as far as
140 miles up the James River, and the planters were so absorbed in the
cultivation of tobacco that they gave the Indians firearms and employed
them to do their hunting. This boldness was shortlived, for the Indian
Massacre of 1622 tended to narrow the area under cultivation for that
year. Even so, the planters were able to produce 60,000 pounds of
tobacco.

Within a year after the massacre the settlers once again became very
bold and extended cultivated areas even farther than before. Prior to
the massacre, the planters had difficulty in clearing the ground of
timber; afterwards, they took over the fields cleared by the Indians
which were said to be among the best in the colony. Expansion was
further facilitated by the "head-right" system, introduced in 1618,
which gave fifty acres of land to any person who transported a settler
to the colony.

For the first twenty years after the landing at Jamestown, the settlers
restricted themselves to the valley of the James and to the Accomac
Peninsula. For the next thirty years there was a gradual expansion to
the north and west along the banks of the James, York, and the
Rappahannock rivers and their tributaries. By 1650 the frontiersmen had
reached the Potomac. From Jamestown, settlements gradually spread up
and down both banks of the James and its tributaries, the Elizabeth,
Nansemond, Appomattox, and the Chickahominy. Then came the settlements
along the York and its tributaries, the Mattapony and the Pamunkey; and
finally, along the banks of the Rappahannock and the Potomac. The
expansion into the interior did not take place un