THE FARM LAND 29 



pains at all, by the Help of the Low Grounds, and the great 

 Variety of Mast that grows on the High-land. The Men, for 

 their Parts, just like the Indians, impose all the Work upon 

 the poor Women. They make their Wives rise out of their 

 Beds early in the Morning, at the same time that they lye and 

 Snore, till the Sun has run one third of his course, and disperst 

 all the unwholesome Damps. Then, after Stretching and Yawn 

 ing for half an Hour, they light their Pipes, and, under the 

 Protection of a cloud of Smoak, venture out into the open Air; 

 tho\ if it happens to be never so little cold, they quickly re' 

 turn Shivering into the Chimney corner. When the weather 

 is mild, they stand leaning with both their arms upon the 

 corn-field fence, and gravely consider whether they had best 

 go and take a Small Heat at the Hough: but generally find 

 reasons to put it off till another time." 9 



Agriculture in the South began with one great handicap 

 the determination of the early settlers to mine great and sudden 

 riches from the soil. At first there had been "no talk, no hope, 

 no work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold." 10 The 

 colonists soon learned in the hard school of starvation that the 

 true richness of that land was not to be found in gold mines, 

 but in the earth. A few years later the Governors of the 

 Virginia Company were complaining that "there had been but 

 little returned [to England] worth speaking of save Tobacco 

 and Sassafras, which the people there wholy applying, had by 

 this misgovernment reduced themselves into an extremity of 

 being ready to starve." 11 The reason tobacco was selected as 

 a crop was that for the same amount of labor and time, to 

 bacco would yield six times as much profit as grain. One man 



9 W. K. Boyd, William Byrd's Histories of the Dividing Line, North Carolina 

 Historical Commission. 



10 Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, The 

 Macmillan Company, New York, 1935, p. 39. 



11 Andrews, op. dt., p. 153. 



