which the author puts down his personal observations of the plants and
animals of the New World, and particularly the account of the Indians,
to which his third book is devoted, and which is accompanied by
valuable plates. Beverly's knowledge of these matters was evidently at
first hand, and his descriptions here are very fresh and interesting.
The more strictly historical part of his work is not free from
prejudice and inaccuracy. A more critical, detailed, and impartial,
but much less readable, work was William Stith's _History of the First
Discovery and Settlement of Virginia_, 1747, which brought the subject
down only to the year 1624. Stith was a clergyman, and at one time a
professor in William and Mary College.

The Virginians were stanch royalists and churchmen. The Church of
England was established by law, and non-conformity was persecuted in
various ways. Three missionaries were sent to the colony in 1642 by
the Puritans of New England, two from Braintree, Massachusetts, and one
from New Haven. They were not suffered to preach, but many resorted to
them in private houses, until, being finally driven out by fines and
imprisonments, they took refuge in Catholic Maryland. The Virginia
clergy were not, as a body, very much of a force in education or
literature. Many of them, by reason of the scattering and dispersed
condition of their parishes, lived as domestic chaplains with the
wealthier planters, and partook of their illiteracy and their passion
for gaming and hunting. Few of them inherited the zeal of Alexander
Whitaker, the "Apostle of Virginia," who came over in 1611 to preach to
the colonists and convert the Indians, and who published in furtherance
of those ends _Good News from Virginia_, in 1613, three years before
his death by drowning in the James River.

The conditions were much more favorable for the production of a