sunny valleys between the sea and the Alleghanies, and in time created
lordly domains and plantations, over which the possessors exercised
feudal sway. But this colony, composed originally in the main of
gentlemen unused to manual labor, and indisposed to bear patiently the
hardships of early settlement, did not become established without many
and serious difficulties. The colonists at first hung tents to the
trees to shelter them from the sun; and the best of their houses "could
neither well defend wind nor rain." Captain John Smith wrote to England,
begging his friends there to "rather send thirty carpenters, husbandmen,
gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, and diggers-up of the roots, well
provided, than a thousand of such as we have."

[Sidenote: Tobacco in Virginia.]

The Virginians cultivated tobacco; and in the same year that the
Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock, the first cargo of African slaves was
carried up the James River in a Dutch trading ship. It is an interesting
fact that so extensive and profitable was the early cultivation of
tobacco in Virginia that it became the general medium of exchange. Debts
were paid with it; fines of so much tobacco, instead of so much money,
were imposed; a wife cost a Virginian five hundred pounds of the
narcotic weed; and even the government accepted it in discharge of
taxes.

[Sidenote: Virginian Customs.]

Virginia early became divided into classes; the landlords being a
virtual nobility, the poorer colonists a middle class, and the slaves
comprising the lower social stratum. The Church of England was the
prevailing sect, and English habits of hospitality and ease of manner