Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/113

 probably dogs imported directly from England, where they had been accustomed to course in the open fields. It was only in one portion of the new country that much small wood seems to have been found; in his voyage up the Chesapeake, Smith observed in all the little valleys running back from the Bay on the western shore, dense copses, but in passing as a captive through the country situated at a considerable distance from the same line of shore, he was impressed with the fineness of the timber which he saw on every hand.

The first tree seen in Virginia by the voyagers of 1607 was the pine. The coast at Cape Henry, which was the first to rise from the vast plain of the ocean as they approached the continent from the open sea, was overgrown with the same variety of pine observed there to-day, and the groups of these trees when sighted doubtless presented the same appearance of looming directly from the waves on the furthest bounds of the horizon. Such countless numbers of them grew along the whole coast, that in after times the sailors employed in the carrying trade of Virginia were in the habit of asserting that they could detect the presence of land long before it emerged to view, by the odor which the pines breathed, upon the winds blowing from the shore. The voyagers of 1607 have left no record to show that they were greeted as they sailed towards the Capes by this invisible precursor of the beautiful country which they were seeking, although in the noble ode which the poet Drayton had addressed to them on the departure of their ships from London, he had referred to the delicious smell, diffused over the &#8220;flowing seas by the clear