A HUNDRED YEAKS' PROGRESS. 275 



It is true the happiness and prosperity of a nation depend upon the 

 union and the haruiouions development of every variety of industrial 

 })ursuit ; but the groundwork and the pillar of eivilized society, on 

 which its prosperity, its solidity, and its glory must ultimately rest, is 

 agriculture, the production of the means of sustaining- a rapidly growing- 

 population. Commerce draws its life-blood from this, manufactures 

 grow out of it. "They all stand together, like pillars, in a cluster, the 

 Inrgest in the center, and that largest is agriculture." 



A glance at the history of this great industry in the United States 

 will therefore be found to possess much that is interesting, instructive, 

 and useful. 



There is little need to look beyond the period of the Eevolution in 

 search of the first steps at any real progress in the agriculture of this 

 country. The first European settlers upon these shores had to begin 

 life anew, as it were, in the midst of untold hardships, privations, and 

 dangers. They found a climate widely different from any wliich they 

 had known before; a soil which the foot of civilized man had never trod, 

 and natural ])roductions -which they had never seen. They brought 

 with them little or no experience which could have fitted them for the 

 rude struggle with nature in which they were about to engage. This 

 they were forced to gain, painfully and laboriously enough, with the ax 

 in hand to clear the forest, and the gun bj' their side to defend their 

 lives. That progress in agriculture should have been slow is not, there- 

 fore, a matter of surprise. We must rather wonder that the}' got on at 

 all in the struggle for life. 



The different colonies, no doubt, had a somewhat different experience. 

 The winters of Virginia were milder than those of New England, and 

 the settlers on the James Eiver suffered less from this cause than those 

 farther north, but all were alike surrounded by a w ilderness infested 

 by savage men and by wild beasts, always ready to prey upon their 

 live stock or to destroy their crops. For some months after lauding 

 there were, indeed, no cattle to be destroyed. The first animals im- 

 ported into the colonies were those that arrived at the James lliver 

 plantation, some time previous to IGOO, the exact date of their arrival 

 not being known. In ICIO several cows were landed there, and a hun- 

 dred more in IGll. The first may have been brought by the early 

 adventurers, either at the time of their first voyage, in 1G07, or soon 

 after, but the later additions probably came from the West Indies, being 

 the descendants of the cattle brought to America, in his second voyage, 

 by Columbus, in 1493. 



So important was it considered that the cattle should be allowed to 

 increase and multiply that, according to an old authority, an order was 

 passed forbidding the destruction of domestic animals, on pain of death 

 to the principal, burning of the hand and cropping the ears of the 

 accessory, and a sound whipping for the concealer of the facts. Such 

 being the nature of the encouragement to the raising of stock, the 

 number of cattle in the Virginia colony increased to about five hundred 

 head in 1G20, and to about thirty thousand in 1G39, -while the fact that 

 the number had decreased to twenty thousand in 1GI8, would seem to 

 indicate that the restriction had been removed. Man^^ also had been 

 sent to the colonies farther north. 



The first cattle that were brought to New England arrived at Ply- 

 mouth in 1G24, in the ship Charity. They were imported for the colony 

 by Governor Winslow^, and consisted of three heifers and a bull. They 

 possessed no uniformity of color, being black, black and white, and 

 brindle. In 1G26 twelve cows were sent to Cape Ann, and in 1629 thirty 



