[Sidenote: Absence of towns.]
A glance at the map of Virginia shows to what a remarkable degree it
is intersected by navigable rivers. This fact made it possible for
plantations, even at a long distance from the coast, to have each its
own private wharf, where a ship from England could unload its cargo of
tools, cloth, or furniture, and receive a cargo of tobacco in return.
As the planters were thus supplied with most of the necessaries of
life, there was no occasion for the kind of trade that builds up
towns. Even in comparatively recent times the development of town life
in Virginia has been very slow. In 1880, out of 246 cities and towns
in the United States with a population exceeding 10,000, there were
only six in Virginia.

[Sidenote: Slavery]
The cultivation of tobacco upon large estates caused a great demand for
cheap labour, and this was supplied partly by bringing negro slaves from
Africa, partly by bringing criminals from English jails. The latter were
sold into slavery for a limited term of years, and were known as
"indentured white servants." So great was the demand for labour that it
became customary to kidnap poor friendless wretches on the streets of
seaport towns in England and ship them off to Virginia to be sold into
servitude. At first these white servants were more numerous than the
negroes, but before the end of the seventeenth century the blacks had
come to be much the more numerous.

[Sidenote: Social position of settlers.]
In this rural community the owners of plantations came from the same
classes of society as the settlers of New England; they were for the
most part country squires and yeomen. But while in New England there