Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/165

 the imprudences which their inexperience or their intemperateness led them to commit.

As the area of the clearings enlarged, a great improvement in the public health was observed, extending even to those persons who had recently arrived in Virginia. In his answers to the interrogatories of the Commissioners of Plantations in 1671, Governor Berkeley stated that it was then rare that an unseasoned hand died, although at one time the mortality had been in proportion of one to five.