Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/118

 Lebanon, the most famous in the world, without disadvantage. Like the pine, the cedar found its most congenial soil in the sandy tracts of the coast. In modern times, it is conspicuous in every part of the lower Tidewater division of the State, overshadowing the public roads, and creating patches of green in the woods in the winter; originally, it was probably not so abundant, but sufficiently so to enter into the impression that was left upon the eye by every forest scene.

The sassafras was as frequently observed in Virginia three hundred years ago as it is to-day; so plentiful was it on Jamestown Island and in the country adjacent, that the attention of the earliest colonists was directed to securing it, to the neglect of their cornfields. At a later period, it was associated with tobacco as one of the two commodities from Virginia offered in large quantities for sale in London; this would not have been the case unless it had been abundant, for, unlike the tobacco plant, it was not renewed from year to year. A tree once destroyed was destroyed forever. At the very time that shipments of the roots were largest, the colonists were pent up by the Indians in a comparatively narrow space. The constant apprehension of an attack prevented them from wandering to great distances in search of sassafras, and the ease with which it was procured under circumstances so adverse, is a very strong indication that it grew quite thickly in the whole valley of the Powhatan, since that valley, in the neighborhood of Jamestown, differed but little from the remaining portion of it.