lead upright lives if given a chance. When they found themselves in a new country, surrounded by changed conditions, and removed from the vice and temptations which had environed them at home, many of them became peaceable and industrious citizens. With the first settlers there came also many who styled themselves gentlemen. They had never done any work and never expected to do any. They counted upon making money by speculation. If that should fail, they intended to live in idleness upon the labors of others. They soon learned better. No money could be made by speculation in a country where there was no money; and those who were idle were left to starve. The gentlemen found it necessary to betake themselves to labor like the others, and they became valuable members of the colony.

5. The Physical Geography of Virginia.-Climate, soil, and the natural features of a country, often have much to do with its history. It is not so far from England to Labrador as from England to Virginia; and Labrador was discovered first. Yet, to this day, Labrador is a wilderness, because its climate is inhospitable and its soil poor. Virginia invited the planter. Its soil was fertile;its climate was mild; its harbors were large and safe; its rivers were navigable; its forests were abundant and furnished lumber for houses and wood for fuel. For the first hundred and fifty miles toward the west no mountains barred the path of the settler. If disease was at first exceptionally fatal to the colonists, it was due more to their own ignorance than to any miasmal condition of the country. Both the Potomac and the James rivers received tributaries from the very summit of the Alleghanies; and, flowing across the low countries to Chesapeake Bay, they were all natural highways by which the pioneers moved, year by year, toward the west. The mouths of those rivers are very wide, made so by the washing of the tides which twice a day flow up from the ocean, and ebb back. In many places the coast of Virginia is but little above the water of the ocean. There are few hills

and no mountains to turn aside the winds which bring rain The country is made productive by timely showers, and vegetation is luxuriant.

from the sea.

6. Hardships and Dangers. Such were some of the advantages of country and climate which the wilderness of Virginia, three hundred years ago, offered those who came from England in search of homes. Yet the colony passed through many hardships and dangers before firmly establishing itself upon the sure foundation of agriculture. The people did not understand the conditions which surrounded them. Instead of clearing ground and raising something to eat and something to sell, they spent much time in a fruitless search for gold. Then they turned their attention to the raising of tobacco, to the neglect of nearly everything else. As a consequence, many persons nearly starved to death, and there was no prosperity in the colony. For the first few years the settlement contained no women and children. The men did not regard the country as a permanent home, but only as a temporary abode. This condition was very hurtful to the enterprise. But, in course of time, the men married wives who had been sent from England. The Indians taught the art of clearing ground and raising corn. Cattle, sheep, and hogs were introduced from Europe. Land became individual property instead of belonging to a company in London. The people possessed a voice in the management of their affairs, and elected a legislature, although its members were few and its powers were very limited. Thus the Jamestown colony was established

upon a firm basis. More than once it had been upon the verge

of ruin; and once the people had actually left it and had set out upon their return to England. But before they had reached the open sea they met a ship with food and supplies, and, taking courage again, returned to Jamestown and went to work with renewed energy. New settlers came; activity took the place of despondency; and cabins and cornfields broke the wilderness solitude for many miles along the James River, and between that stream and the Potomac. At the end

of fifteen years there were eighty settlements and three thousand people in Virginia. In 1619 twenty negro slaves were brought from Africa in a Dutch ship and sold to the Virginians. That was the beginning of negro slavery in the United States.

7. The Indians of Eastern Virginia.-When that portion of Virginia between the Blue Ridge and the sea first became known to the English, it contained a scattered Indian population, probably not more than one person to each square mile. The settlers at once came in contact with the natives, who Powhatan was were generally harmless but not always so. chief of the principal tribe, and lived in a village near the site of Richmond. The Indians of that region were divided into many small tribes, those of the center of the state being of the The nation of Sioux, whose kindred survive in the West. tribes near the mountains had moved down from the North, and belonged to the Iroquois. They were at that time slowly pushing back or exterminating the Sioux and other Indians of that region. The coming of the white people put a stop to the victorious movement of the Iroquois, whose power none of the other tribes of the East and South seemed able to resist.

8. Settlement of the Shenandoah Valley.-The English settlements reached the base of the Blue Ridge in a little more than one hundred years after the founding of Jamestown. Between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains lies the Shenandoah Valley, often called the Valley of Virginia. The settlers from that valley were an important factor in shaping the early history of what is now West Virginia. The majority of the colonists on the Shenandoah had not moved westward from the settlements along the coast of Virginia. In fact, the people of that valley were not pure English, but a mixture of Scotch, German, Irish, Dutch, Huguenot, and English. They came largely from Pennsylvania, between the years 1730 and 1750, and many of them were members of the Presbyterian Church. Thus a new factor entered into the history of Vir

ginia; and the history of West Virginia must take account of it. Not only the descendants of the early colonists at Jamestown, but also the descendants of the first settlers in the Shenandoah Valley, were among the pioneers who later crossed the Alleghanies and built cabins on the Kanawha, the Monongahela, and the Ohio.

CHAPTER II.

UPPER POTOMAC SETTLEMENTS.

1. The First Cabins.-The homes of white men made their appearance in the valley of the South Branch of the Potomac, and in the neighboring regions, soon after the building of the first cabins in the Shenandoah. The beginning was about the year 1735. No mountains of a difficult nature interfered with the movements of homeseekers and adventurers from the Shenandoah to the South Branch. They could ascend the Potomac River, or they could take the shorter route across North Mountain. Two days was sufficient time for the journey from the one valley to the other.

2. The Land Belonged to Lord Fairfax.-That part of West Virginia now included in Mineral, Hampshire, Hardy, Morgan, Berkeley, Jefferson, and portions of Grant and Tucker counties, was the property of Lord Fairfax, when the first settlers entered that region. The King of England had granted this land to some English gentlemen many years before any white men lived west of the Blue Ridge. It had passed into the hands of Lord Fairfax, who had no intention of selling it. He was anxious, however, to have it occupied and improved, hoping thus to receive large rents from thousands of tenants. The rates of rent were very low, amounting to no more than usual taxes; and so long as the tenants paid punctually, they could not be compelled to remove from the property. estate of Lord Fairfax lay between the Potomac and the Rappahannock, and was enclosed on the third side by a line from the fountain spring of the one river to that of the other. One of the stones, set up in 1745 to mark the extreme northern and western corner of the Fairfax estate, stood till recently at the

The