Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/97

 CHAPTER II

ABORIGINAL VIRGINIA &#8212; ITS PHYSICAL CHARACTER

in the Old World casts no real light upon the period when the European landscapes which art has now done so much to adorn, enrich, and diversify, expanded in unbroken forests inhabited by a few tribes of savages, who spent their lives in the endeavor to earn a meagre and precarious subsistence by the pursuits of the chase. There the agricultural labors of men began in ages immemorial, and the face of the earth was substantially altered long before the first written record was made. Our knowledge of the original character of the greater part of Europe is doubtful and limited, because the mind and hand alike of man had been deeply impressed upon it when the faintest tradition transmitted to us arose. Not even Gaul, Germany, and Britain were entirely barbarous regions when they were first visited by the representatives of Roman power and civilization. In the age of Tacitus, a century later, Germany was still covered with forests, but a fixed system of tillage had been generally adopted by its people and steadily pursued. We must turn to the plateaus of Central Africa in modern times for a counterpart of the scenes observed by the first adventurers who penetrated