72 LARGE PLANTATIONS. 



employ their care and time about anything that may make them 

 lessen their crop of tobacco. So that though they are apt to 

 learn, yet they are fond of and will follow their own ways, 

 humors and notions, being not easily brought to new 

 projects and schemes ; so that I question if they would have 

 been improved upon by the Mississippi or South sea, or any 

 other such monstrous bubbles. The common planters lead- 

 ing easy lives without much labor, or any manly exercise, 

 except horse-racing, nor diversion, except cock-fighting, in 

 which some greatly delight. 



" This easy way of living, and the heat of the summer, 

 makes some very lazy, who are then said to be climate-struck 

 They are such lovers of riding, that almost every ordinary 

 person keeps a horse ; and I have known some spend the 

 morning in ranging several miles in the woods to find and 

 catch their horses to ride only two or three miles to the Church, 

 to the Court-House or to a Horse-Race, where they generally 

 appoint to meet upon business ; and are more certain of finding 

 those that they want to speak or deal with, than at their 

 home. No people can entertain their friends with better cheer 

 and welcome ; and stranger and traveler is here treated in the 

 most free, plentiful, and hospitable manner ; so that a few 

 Inns or Ordinaries on the road are sufficient." 



This is no doubt a correct picture of the early planters of 

 Virginia. Many of them became the owners of large plant- 

 ations and all those who were successful growers of tobacco 

 became wealthy in proportion to the quality of leaf produced. 

 The merchants, factors or store-keepers bought up the 

 tobacco of the planters paying in goods or " current Spanish 

 money, or with sterling bills payable in Great Britain." At 

 first the cultivation of tobacco by the colony was confined to 

 Jamestown and the immediate vicinity, but as the colony 

 increased and the country became more densely populated, 

 plantations w r ere laid out in the various counties and a large 

 quantity was produced some ways from the great center 

 Jamestown ; accordingly various methods were adopted to 

 get the tobacco to market, some of which was sent by boats 

 or canoes down the rivers, while some was conveyed in carta 

 and wagons while another method was by rolling in hoops. 

 Tatham in his interesting work on tobacco, gives the fol- 

 lowing description of the method : 



