WEST VIRGINIA. 43 



The ploughs and automaton harvesters, which will hereafter garner the an- 

 nual wealth of western prairies, may be transported to all those plains in vessels 

 fabricated by the labor of West Virginia from her own oak and iron, and the 

 metal of those implements may there be mined, the ore heated by adjacent 

 strata of coal, the requisite flux obtained from the same hill, and all compacted 

 into a perfect machine, with timber found growing on the surface, which has 

 been manufactured by a perpetual water-power that leaps the crags of the 

 summit and falls gently into the vale below, meandering towards the Ohio, 

 quiet as the meditative ox that fattens on the sweetest of perennial herbage 

 upon its banks. 



Where, in the wide world, lies so broad a network of water communication 

 at the very feet of a State so full of the varied treasures of the forest and of 

 the mine 1 That such a country, with an elevation above the malarias of the 

 lowlands, and never rising above the level of corn and sorghum production ; 

 within a few hours of the sea and its treasures and facilities for transit — a land 

 peculiar for its green pastures flowing with milk, for its bright flowers laden 

 with honey, and for its river slopes that promise to run with wine — should lack 

 inhabitants, or the hum of industry, or the show of wealth, is an absurdity of 

 the present and an impossibility of the future. 



POPULATION. 



Settlements began to extend across the mountains immediately after the close 

 of the revolutionary war. Localities in Greenbrier and Berkeley, and other 

 counties, were settled before its close. Virginia, in 1781, had already a popu- 

 lation of 567,614 — almost double the present population of West Virginia. It 

 was rapidly increasing, doubling its population in twenty-seven years, this rate 

 of increase having long existed with great regularity. Jefi'erson, assuming the 

 same ratio of advance, predicted the attainment of a population of 4,540,912 

 in 1863. This he regarded an a " competent population," which would be 

 73 to the square mile, and less than the present population of Massachusetts, 

 Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, and equal to that of 

 Maryland. In 1790 the population was 748,318, verifying Jefferson's calcu- 

 lations. In 1808 it should have been 1,135,2-28; it was actually but 1,065,129 

 in 1820, and in 1860 it was 1,596,118, little more than one-third- of Jefferson's 

 assumed population. 



This calculation was by no means unreasonable. If Virginia had continued 

 to be the most densely populated State in the Union, its population would, in 

 1860, have been 9,683,186. Nor is it due to superior natural resources that a 

 half dozen other States have a denser population than Jefferson expected for 

 his native State, for Virginia exceeds them all in natural wealth, and starwls 

 upon an equality with the most favored in point of climate. 



It is fair, then, to ask, why has not West Virginia been peopled 1 When 

 the last census was taken, there were found 389,809 inhabitants of other States 

 born in Vii-ginia. How many, in the past, had died away from their native 

 soil, and how many children of these and of living Virginians are now aiding to 

 swell the population of other States, cannot be known ; were it exhibited, it 

 might show the prediction of Jefferson to be an approach either to prophetic 

 accuracy or exact mathematical calculation. It may be said with some truth 

 that the superior facility for getting prairie lands into cultivation in regions 

 farther west has drawn emigrants over the summits and down the western slopes 

 of the Alleghanies. The swinging of the woodman's axe and the climbing of 

 hills may have been distasteful ; and the deep river bottoms and broad alluvial 

 plains may have had their attractions, despite the discomfort of chills and fever 

 and the annoyance of mud and mosquitoes. 



