CHAPTER being to fell the trees, dig up the roots, and so to preXI. pare the land for the plow. It is represented to possess 1649. "twenty-five sorts of trees, large, good, and fit for ship ping, housing, and other use;" "twenty kinds of beasts," deer being abundant, and most of the other sorts fit to eat; twenty-five sundry sorts of birds and fowls, land and water, for food not amiss;" "thirty sorts of fish, river and sea, plentiful, large, and very excellent;" the climate as healthy as that of England; the land "most fruitful and productive, with very great increase;" "a fat, rich soil, with very fine springs, small rivulets, and wholesome waters," facilities of intercourse being also furnished by the great rivers. "They yearly plant and sow many hundred acres of wheat, as good and fair as any in the world, and great increase;" they have plenty of barley, "which makes excellent malt;" "their maize, or Virginia corn, it yields them five hundred for one-they set it as we do garden pease-it makes good bread and frumenty, and malts well;" they have "roots of several kinds, potatoes"-the sweet potato, no doubt" aspar agus, carrots, onions, and artichokes;" "herbs of all kinds, garden and physic;" "hops fine and large;" "store of Indian pease, better than ours, beans, lupines, and the like," besides "fifteen kinds of fruit, pleasant and good." "With Italy they will compare for delicate fruits." Their tobacco, "much vaunted and esteemed in all parts," sells in the colony for only threepence, or six cents, per pound, and the colonists, we are told, were turning their attention to indigo, which throve so well that great hopes were entertained "to gain the trade of it from the Great Mogul, and to supply all Christendom." It was not, however, till a subsequent period, and in more southern colonies, that this hope was partially realized; and in the end, in this matter of indigo, the country of the Great Mogul has proved an overmatch for us. XI. The live stock of the colony is reckoned at twenty CHAPTER thousand cattle, two hundred horses, "of an excellent race," fifty asses, three thousand sheep, and five thou- 1649. sand goats; " swine, tame, and wild, innumerable, the flesh pure and good, bacon none better;" "poultry, hens, turkeys, geese, and ducks, without number;" beef, five cents a pound; pork, six; cattle, "about the same prices as in England;" "butter and cheese, made in the colony, plenty and good." The inhabitants are reckoned at fifteen thousand English, and three hundred "good negro servants." There were "six public brew-houses, but most brew their own beer, strong and good;" four wind-mills and five water-mills to grind corn. A saw-mill, for boards, was much wanted; iron ore was plenty, but there was nobody to work it. "There come yearly to trade about thirty ships a good seminary for mariners." "Most of the masters and chief mariners have also their plantations, and houses, and servants, &c., and so are every way great gainers by freight and merchandise;" and if they can not fill up with tobacco, they take "staves, clapboards, good walnut-tree wood, cedar timber, and the like." There is lime in abundance, and good brick; the houses "high and fair," some of brick and others of wood, but covered with shingles, the brick-makers not being skillful enough to make tile. There are twenty churches, the livings of the ministers being worth at least £100, $480, annually. No correct notion had yet been obtained of the breadth of the continent. The country beyond the first ridge of mountains was unexplored; "but all men conclude, if it be not narrow, yet there will be found the like rivers issuing into a south or west sea on the other side of the hills, as there is on this side toward the east, with a course of about a hundred and fifty miles." The same dreams XI. CHAPTER of an overland traffic to India that interest the sanguine of to-day, prevailed two hundred years ago among the 1649. colonists of Virginia. These western rivers, it was expected, would be soon explored, "and by such a discov ery the planters in Virginia, shall gain the rich trade of the East Indies, and so cause it to be driven through the continent, part by land, part by water, and in a most gainful way, safe, and far less expensive and dangerous than it now is." New England, four days' sail distant, has trade to and fro, and takes from Virginia many cattle, much corn, and other things. "That New England is in a good condition of livelihood; but for matter of any great hope but fishing, there is not much." Compared to Virginia, "it's as Scotland is to England, so much difference, and lies upon the same land northward as Scotland does to England; there is much cold, frost, and snow; their land so barren, except a herring be put into the hole you set the corn in, it will not come up; and it was great pity all those planters, now about twenty thousand, did not seat themselves at first at the south of Virginia, in a warm and rich country, where their industry could have produced sugar, indigo, ginger, cotton, and the like commodities." So it seemed at that time; but how much has New England, cold and sterile, with its sole staples of fish, ice, and granite, outrun, even in the career of wealth, all the boasted regions of tobacco, cotton, and sugar! Though the inhabitants of Virginia are represented in the pamphlet above quoted as "living all in peace and love," the effects of the parliamentary triumph in England began to make themselves manifest; so much so, that 1648. the Assembly had deemed it necessary to vote a bodyguard of ten men for Governor Berkeley, not only to pro October. XI. tect him from "treacherous attempts of the salvages," CHAPTER but also from "a sense of the many disaffections to the. government from a schismatical party." The governor's 1649. right to press men for soldiers was expressly confirmed. Notwithstanding the expulsion of the New England ministers, a Puritan church had contrived to maintain itself in Virginia. But the vigilance of the governor was now awakened, and the members of that church, a hundred and eighteen in number, with a Mr. Harrison for` their pastor, and a Mr. Durand for their ruling elder, were obliged to leave the colony. They were invited to remove to Eleuthera, one of the Bahamas, where a new attempt at settlement was in progress under the direction of Sayle, twenty years after governor of Carolina. Harrison sought refuge in Boston, whence presently he went to England. Unfortunately for Lord Baltimore and his Catholic subjects, Durand, with most of the church members, preferred going to Maryland; and on the River Severn, not far from the present site of Annapolis, they formed a settlement which they called Providence. About the same time arrived from England Robert Brooke, with his wife, eight sons, a great number of servants, and a commission from Lord Baltimore appointing him commander of a county. Charles county was accordingly established on his behalf. The next year Stone visited the settlement at Providence, and organized it as Ann Arundel county, so named from Lady Baltimore. During a temporary absence of Stone on a visit to Virginia, news arrived in Maryland of the execution of Charles I., and of the proclamation of Charles II. as king of Scotland. Greene, who acted as governor in Stone's absence, caused the young king to be proclaimed. He was also proclaimed in Virginia, where the news pro CHAPTER duced quite a burst of loyalty in the shape of an act of XI. Assembly, which provided that any person, stranger or 1649. inhabitant, who should, by reasoning or argument, defend "the late traitorous proceedings against the late most excellent and now undoubtedly sainted king," should be prosecuted as an accessary to his murder after the fact; that any person convicted of attempting to blast the late king's memory and honor, by "irreverent or scandalous words," should suffer such punishment as the governor and council might direct; while to insinuate any doubts as to Charles II.'s right of succession was to be dealt with as treason. The same penalty was also denounced against spreading rumors tending to a change of government, or to lessen its power or authority, which power was declared plenary to all intents and purposes-a clause aimed, it is probable, at those disaffected persons who argued that the demise of the crown had vacated Berkeley's commission. Lord Baltimore's approval of Greene's precipitate loyalty is more than doubtful. The young king, at all events, seems to have regarded the proprietary of Maryland as a time-server, if not as an enemy; for while he sent out 1650. a new commission to Berkeley as Governor of Virginia, June. disregarding the proprietary rights of Baltimore, he ap pointed as governor of Maryland Sir William Davenant, known afterward as a dramatist and stage manager, and for his claim to be a natural son of Shakspeare. Davenant, then an exile in France, where the young king himself was soon obliged to seek shelter, collected a body of refugee Loyalists, and embarked for Maryland; but at no great distance from the French coast he fell in with the parliamentary fleet, was taken prisoner, and carried to England, where he owed his liberation to the friendly intercessions of Milton, a brother poet, who had just |