230 SPOFFORD 



It is not singular tliat we find, scattered through the literature 

 of the 17th and i8th centuries, numerous encomiums upon Vir- 

 ginia. Says the quaint historian Beverly : " Here people enjoy 

 all the benefits of a warm sun, and by their shady trees are pro- 

 tected from its inconvenience. Here all their senses are enter- 

 tained with an endless succession of native pleasures." The 

 chronicler of Newport's voyage wrote that Virginia might 

 •' claim the perogative over the most pleasant places in the 

 world." Edward Williams wrote, in 1650, <' the melancholiest 

 eye in the world cannot look upon it without contentment, nor 

 content himself without admiration." Hugh Jones records : 

 •'Virginia is esteemed one of the most valuable gems in the 

 crown of Great Britain." In England the newly^found virgin 

 land excited a wide-spread interest, reflected by numerous allu- 

 sions in dramatic and poetic literature. Spenser dedicated his 

 Faerie Queen (1590) to " Elizabeth, Queen of England, Ireland, 

 France and Virginia.'''' At a later period, Thomas Neals was 

 made by royal patent ' Postmaster-General of Virginia and 

 other parts of North America.' Arthur Barlowe wrote : " The 

 soil is the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful and wholesome of all 

 the world." Another writer speaks enthusiastically of "the 

 dear strand of Virginia, earth's only paradise." The early his- 

 torian Hamor (1615) tells of the " goodlie rivers, no where else 

 to.be paralleled," and he says, there were " wilde pigeons in 

 winter beyond number or imagination, so thicke that they have 

 even shadowed the skie." Another adds " there are infinite 

 hogges in beards all over the woods." Ralph Lane says : " We 

 have discovered the main to be the goodliest soil under the cope 

 of heaven." Captain John Smith wrote: " Heaven and earth 

 never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation." 



Thomas Harlot's ' Brief and True Report of the New- 

 Found Land in Virginia,' 1588, was the first published account, 

 but between this and 1700, more than thirty distinct books and 

 pamphlets respecting Virginia were published, though a com- 

 plete Virginia bibliography is still to seek. Beverly's Virginia, 

 within two years of its appearance in 1705, was translated 

 into French, and three times reprinted at Paris and Amsterdam. 

 For more than a century before Washington's time, a constant 



