FARMERS' RI^GISTER— CLIMATE OF VIRGINIA. 



215 



indusfrie of man.'"* In an earnest appeal to the 

 friends of the colony, he again reconnncnds it lor 

 the "mildncsse of the ayre and the lertiiitie of the 

 BOjle."! 



This sketch of the colony is studionsly silent as 

 to the existence of marshes, though much of the 

 ill health of the first emigrants, may be traced to 

 tliem.J In giving an account of tlie ba}s, rivers, 

 and brooks, our author incidentally remarks lliat 

 '•by the rivers are many plaine marishes contain- 

 ing some twenty, some one hundred and some two 

 hundred acres. But little of grasse there is but 

 what groweth in low marishes." || In the ad- 

 vance of population and agricultural improvement, 

 these marshes were gradually reduced. Mr. Na- 

 thaniel Caussey wlio had lived in Virginia with 

 Capt. Smith, states in the year 1627, "that where- 

 as the country was heretofore held most intempe- 

 rate and contagious by many now they have 

 houses lodging and victuals and the sun hath pow- 

 er to exhale up the moist vapours of the earth 

 where they have cut down the woods, which be- 

 fore it could not, being covered with sjjreadmg tops 

 of high trees, they tiild it much more healthful 

 than before."Tr Captain Butler a gallant pioneer 

 of the new world, and at one time governor of 

 Bermuda, on his return to England from Virginia 

 in the year 1624, presented to Charles I. a pamphlet 

 entitled, '■'•The. unmasked face of our colony in Vir- 

 ginia as it was in the winter 1622.'"§ In this work he 

 draws a lamentable picture of the struggles of the 

 inltuit colony, and asserts "that the English plan- 

 tations are generally seated on marshes, lakes, and 

 infectious bogs which have subjected the planters 

 to the inconveniences and diseases prevalent in the 

 mostunhealthy parts of England.'"** This pamph- 

 let excited much hostility against the Virginian 

 Company, which ' was arttiiUy fermented by 

 Charles I. who was then secretly planning the 

 ruin of that noble and ]rdtriotic association. Some 

 of the members of the company who had been in 

 Virginia united in an address to the public, in 

 which they state "that they had found the aii- of 

 Virginia to be as wholesome and the soil tor the 

 most part as fertile as in any part of England. "ft 

 The House of Burgesses in a curious memorial of 

 resentment, ill humor, and personal sarca.sm, pro- 

 nounced the charges of Capt Butler to be false 

 and slanderous, and informed the king "that no 

 bogs have been seen here, by any that have lived 

 here twice as many yenrs as Capt. Butler did 

 weeks in the country — the places which he so 

 miscalls being the richest parts of the earth, if we 

 had a sufficient force to clear their woods and to 

 give the fresh springs which pass through them a 

 fi^ee paissage. The soil is generally rich and re- 

 stores our trust with abundance. The air is 

 i?weete and the clime healthlul, all circumstances 

 considered, to men of sound bodies and good go- 

 vernment."J]: 



♦Same, 114. f Same, 128. 



X 111 the reply of Gov. Berkeley to the enquiries of 

 the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, in 

 1G71, he states "that all new plantations are for an age 

 or two unhealthy, until they are thoroughly cleared of 

 wood." 2 Hen. Stat, at Larse, 515. 



II Smith's History of Virginia, Vol. II. 115, 121, 



ITSnme, 2.58. ' 



§ Stith calls it a "starch and affected title." 



** Stith "s History of Virginia, 278, ft Same, 291. 



XX Stith, 308. 



In 1624 the Virginian Company in petitioning par- 

 liament for encouragement mid protection, earnest- 

 ly recommended the colony "for that temperature 

 of climate which agreed well with the English."* 

 Smith often makes similar comparisons, and it is 

 evident fi-om the writing's of our earliest historians, 

 that the climate of Virginia differed but little from 

 that of England. The immense mass of vegeta- 

 tion v/hich overshadowed the country, filled it with 

 fogs and vapors, assimilating it to that of Eng- 

 land, and rendering it extremely cold in its win- 

 ters, and tardy in its summers. It was less aflect- 

 ed by the standard temperature of the sea than 

 England, and was marked with more striking vi- 

 cissitudes. The cold winter of 1607, which was 

 lelt throughout all Europej was, in the language 

 of Smith, found "as extreamein Virginia." There 

 were also many unseasonable years, and others 

 singularly propitious to the agriculture of the coun- 

 try. The year 1610 was long recollected by the 

 epithet of the starving time, while in the year 

 1619 two crops of rare ripe corn were made f 

 Among many of the acts of the House of Bur- 

 gesses regulating the trade of the country, we find 

 one which prohibits the exportation of Indian 

 corn, "on account of the unseasonableness of the 

 last two summers."§ 



As the country was gradually cleared of its fo- 

 rests and undergrowth, the climate became dry, 

 temperate, and warm. The act of the House of 

 Burgesses of 1705, which directed the capitol to 

 be built at Williamsburg recites, "that this place 

 hath been found by constant experience to be 

 healthy and agreeable to the constitutions of this 

 his majesty's colony and dominion, having the 

 natural advantages of a serene and temperate air, 

 and dry and champaign land. "IT A correspondent 

 to the Royal Philosophical Society, who wrote an 

 account of Virginia about this period, says "that 

 the winters are dry and clear — the spring is earlier 

 than that of England. Snow fixlls in great quan- 

 tities, but seldom lies above a day or two, and 

 the frosts, though quick and sharpe, seldom last 

 long. Jvdy and August are sultry hot, while Sep- 

 tember is noted for prodigious showers of rain. 

 The north and north west winds are either very 

 sharp and piercing, or boisterous and stormy, and 

 the south east and south hazy and sultry." 



From the want of accurate observations, and 

 those careful collections of meteorological facts 

 which elucidate the character of all climates, our 

 speculations on that of Virginia must be necessa- 

 rily vague and indefinite, and for the nicer shadea 

 of its changes, we are forced to substitute the 

 broader features of its outline. Our climate ia 

 unitbrm only in its sudden vicissitudes. Its con- 

 sistency is impaired by many causes, which have 

 produced a difference of temperature dependant 

 on the deeply marked geographical distinctions of 

 our sea board, tide water, valley, and mountainous 

 regions. ]\Ty observations have been principally 

 confined to that intermediate country, between the 

 Chesapeake and the South West Mountains, on 

 the low and moist lands of the JMataponi, in lati- 

 tude north 38'^ 6', and about seventy miles south 

 of Washington Citv. While I am forced in my 



* Stith, 325. 



t In this year at Paris the beard of Henry IV. was 

 frozen in bed cum regina. Sully's Mem. Vol. IV. 2fi2. 

 } Stith, 162. § Hen. Stat. Large, Vol. III. 185. 

 ITHen. Stat, at Large, Vol. III. 410. 



