l Line; in the meantime, ten of the old established
warehouses far below the Falls were discontinued.

After a year without an official inspection system the lapsed
inspection law was revived in October, 1776; seventy-six of the
warehouses were re-established as official inspection stations. Soon
after the end of the war the number of inspections began to increase
again, and it was chiefly through the efforts of a David Ross that
inspection warehouses were permitted above the Falls. The first
inspections seem to have appeared above the Falls in Virginia in 1785:
one at Crow's Ferry, Botetourt County; one at Lynch's Ferry, Campbell
County; and a third at Point of Fork on the Rivanna River, Fluvanna
County. Tobacco inspected in the warehouses above the Falls could not
be legally delivered for exportation without first being delivered to a
lower warehouse for transportation and reinspection upon demand by the
purchaser.

There were a number of reasons why the inspection warehouses were
restricted to Tidewater Virginia until after the Revolution. It was not
until after the Revolution that a strong need and demand for them was
felt above the Falls. Inadequate transportation facilities in the
interior made exportation from upland inspections less feasible. It is
also probable that the Legislature was opposed to upland inspections as
it would be more difficult to control the inspections, spread out over
a larger area, as rigidly as those concentrated in a smaller area. And
no doubt Tidewater Virginia recognized the economic value of having all
of the inspections located in its own section. However, the sharp
decline in tobacco production in the Tidewater followed by an equal
increase in the Piedmont made inspections above the Falls inevitable.

Of the ninety-three inspection warehouses in operation in 1792, only
about twenty were above the Fall Line; but by 1820 at least half of the
137 legal inspections were above the Falls. Of the forty-two new
inspections established in the period 1800-1820 only three were in
Tidewater Virginia; one in Prince George County in 1807, one in Essex
County in 1810, and the third in Norfolk County in 1818, owing to the
opening of the Dismal Swamp Canal.

SALE OF THE LEAF

Under the original plan of colonization the Virginia settlers were to
pool their goods at the magazine, the general storehouse in Jamestown.
All of the products produced by the settlers, and all goods imported
into the c