Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/223

 successors up to the present day, many of these woodchoppers discovered in the task of removing the forest a source of pleasure and recreation. These early axemen were for the most part gentlemen by birth, and it was remarked that thirty or forty performed the work of a hundred men of the lower rank who were driven to it by the command of their superiors. In the band of men whom Smith, after the return of Newport from his unsuccessful expedition into the Monacan country, led to a point below Jamestown for the purpose of obtaining clapboard, there were two English gallants who had recently come out to the Colony, either in search of adventures or to escape the consequences of dissipated lives at home. Although they had never before cut down a tree, they soon acquired skill in the management of an axe, and were as delighted as school-boys in listening to the thunder of the trees in crashing to the ground. At first, however, their hands were blistered by the unaccustomed touch of the helves, which caused them to exclaim with an oath at every third stroke. To put a stop to this, the president ordered that every oath should be numbered, and, when the work of the day was over, for each oath a can of water was poured down the sleeve of the person who had been guilty of uttering it.