Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/454

 be made to play in restoring the exhausted lands of eastern Virginia. Ninety years after the foundation of Jamestown, there was no element of natural wealth as abundant in the Colony as a virgin soil; the axe and the laborer alone were needed to secure a new field, which was richer in productive qualities than the most highly improved spots in the English shires of Kent and Sussex. As long as this was the case, there could be no real demand for manures. In Virginia, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, there were many planters of the highest intelligence familiar with all the methods that had been adopted in England and Holland for the improvement of agriculture. If they failed to introduce these methods into the Colony, it is evident that they considered it to be cheaper to obtain fertile lands by the removal of the forests than by the application of natural or artificial substances.

The extraordinary value placed upon new grounds in spite of the vast beds of marl to be found in all of the inhabited parts of the Colony, had been shown in a very striking manner in 1648, in an incident which was as characteristic of the last as of the middle part of the century. In that year, a very earnest petition was offered to the Governor and Council by a large number of planters, who sought permission to move from the south to the north side of Charles River, the name borne at that time by the modern York. The only reason advanced to justify the favorable consideration of this petition, was that their lands had become barren from cultivation, and they were anxious in consequence to secure tracts where the soil was still in its prim&aelig;val state. They described their condition in their present situation to be one of great and clamorous necessity, their labors producing only mean tobacco, and their cattle falling into