Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/367

 been too much exhausted to produce tobacco further. Soil of this character was so abundant, that the owners were generally willing to allow it to be tilled by others without charge, or to lease it at a rate nearly nominal. After his seed had been sown, the new colonist had an opportunity to select a place of permanent settlement, and when he had secured his crops, he was in a position to remove his servants, tools and implements, utensils and household goods to the tract which he had decided to take up under patent. In choosing a plantation, he was governed not only by the fertility of the ground, but also by its proximity to a navigable stream, and to neighbors, and by its freedom from ague and fever. The rule followed by the small farmer, who decided to continue in Virginia the cultivation of the products with which he had been familiar in England, was to put down about twenty acres in wheat and three in flax. At this time the Dutch method of ploughing had been partially introduced, and wherever it had been adopted, one man was able to break up the soil, while the master and the other servants erected fences around the fields as a protection against wandering cows, horses, and hogs, as well as deer. When the earth had been turned over, the seed planted and the enclosures completed, there was nothing to be done until the wheat and flax had ripened. The flax was the first to be harvested, the seed having been sown in May. It was liberally calculated that the sowing and the beating out of this crop would cover the space of three weeks; twenty-five were allowed for the dressing of nine hundred stone, this being a much more ample provision in point of time than the same process was permitted to occupy in England. Three weeks constituted the period allotted for reaping the wheat, the operation of securing it even from so small an area as twenty acres