CHAPTER III


VIRGINIA AGRICULTURE IN WASHINGTON'S DAY

The Virginia of George Washington's youth and early manhood was an
imperial domain reaching from Atlantic tidewater through a thousand
leagues of forests, prairies and mountains "west and northwest" to the
South Sea. Only a narrow fringe along the eastern coast was settled by
white men; the remainder was a terra incognita into which Knights of the
Golden Horseshoe and Indian traders had penetrated a short distance,
bringing back stories of endless stretches of wolf-haunted woodland, of
shaggy-fronted wild oxen, of saline swamps in which reposed the whitened
bones of prehistoric monsters, of fierce savage tribes whose boast was
of the number of scalps that swung in the smoke of their wigwams. Even
as late as 1750 the fertile Shenandoah Valley beyond the Blue Ridge
formed the extreme frontier, while in general the "fall line," where the
drop from the foothills to the coastal plain stops navigation, marked
the limit of settlement.

At the time that Washington began to farm in earnest eastern Virginia
had, however, been settled for one hundred fifty-two years. Yet the
population was almost wholly rural. Williamsburg, the capital, was
hardly more than a country village, and Norfolk, the metropolis,
probably did not contain more than five thousand inhabitants. The
population generally was so scattered that, as has been remarked, a man
could not see his neighbor without a telescope or be heard by him
without firing a gun.