The Seeding of New England 77 



of three hundred pounds of tobacco and one hundred and 

 eleven bushels of corn. 



The increase in the planting of tobacco naturally raised the 

 price of corn. The price per bushel in 1624 was the highest 

 known. And just as quickly as they had turned to tobacco, the 

 settlers began to extend their cornlands. 



The country was growing by leaps and bounds. Growing, 

 more truly, by tons of tobacco and bushels of corn. Tobacco 

 made Virginia. It determined the type of life along the Tide- 

 water rivers and up to the base of the Blue Ridge. It precluded 

 towns in favor of the large plantations, each of which ulti- 

 mately became a town in itself. It made a prince of each 

 planter along the rivers. Their ships carried tons of fragrant 

 leaves to London, and brought back in return fine china from 

 Lowestoft, silverware and copper, silks, velvets, laces, mirrors, 

 wallpaper for the drawing rooms, and tuns of wine for the 

 cellars. The same ships brought muskets, gunpowder and slips 

 of fruit trees to plant in orchards, and books like that first 

 folio of Shakespeare which had just been published. 



But the smoke trade, and all that it brought about, would 

 never have been without the fields of useful corn which waved 

 green leaves and tassels beside the acres of tobacco. Corn fed 

 the indentured servants whose labor made possible the to- 

 bacco crop, long before the "twenty negars" which the Dutch 

 brought to and sold in Jamestown in 1619 had increased to 

 form an important part of the population. 



At the time that the Plymouth Pilgrims were holding their 

 Solemn Day of Humiliation for the benefit of their corn, the 

 whites in Virginia numbered less than two thousand. All were 

 foreign born, except the babies, the first fruits of those mar- 

 riages contracted in 1619 when the Company sent out ninety 

 young women and sold them as wives, at prices ranging from 

 one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds of 

 tobacco, according to comeliness. But already the settlement 

 extended inland some seventy miles, up the James almost to 



