GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS 
39 
about two years later—a very small house, consider¬ 
ing whose it was, for it contained only six rooms. 
But the kitchens and various rooms devoted to the 
.service of the household were invariably located in 
detached outbuildings, in this sunny land; so this, 
after all, was a house of considerable dignity and size, 
in view of the youth of the Colony. But it is com¬ 
monly said and believed that it could boast no dwell¬ 
ing in the seventeenth century—or none until towards 
the end of that century—of any pretense to any 
beauty or elegance. And naturally while houses were 
still somewhat rude and unlovely, gardens would be 
also. 
Towards the end of that century a new era was 
dawning, however—the era that always comes when 
the fighting and stern effort of pioneer years are over. 
The cultivation of tobacco had gradually extended 
and widened the holdings of those who raised it, for 
almost no plant exhausts the soil as it does; hence 
every plantation continually expanded, as before men¬ 
tioned, for new fields had constantly to be cleared up 
for it. The old and worn out ones where it had been 
cropped were improvidently left to barrenness in that 
age of plenty. If it robbed the land, however, it 
brought riches to the planters; and for it their laborers 
were many, for the slaves had come early. Added to 
this, the planters themselves were, many of them, men 
