Pioneers of the Old South | Page 6

and economic considerations, practical reasons of
all kinds, drew a different physical form for old Virginia. Before the
seventeenth century had passed away, they had given to her northern
end a baptism of other names. To the south she was lopped to make the
Carolinas. Only to the west, for a long time, she seemed to grow, while
like a mirage the South Sea and Cathay receded into the distance.
This narrative, moving with the three ships from England, and through
a time span of less than a hundred and fifty years, deals with a region of
the western hemisphere a thousand miles in length, several hundred in
breadth, stretching from the Florida line to the northern edge of
Chesapeake Bay, and from the Atlantic to the Appalachians. Out of this
Virginia there grow in succession the ancient colonies and the modern
States of Virginia, Maryland, South and North Carolina, and Georgia.
But for many a year Virginia itself was the only settlement and the only
name. This Virginia was a country favored by nature. Neither too hot
nor too cold, it was rich-soiled and capable of every temperate growth
in its sunniest aspect. Great rivers drained it, flowing into a great bay,
almost a sea, many-armed as Briareus, affording safe and sheltered
harbors. Slowly, with beauty, the land mounted to the west. The sun set
behind wooded mountains, long wave-lines raised far back in geologic
time. The valleys were many and beautiful, watered by sliding streams.
Back to the east again, below the rolling land, were found the
shimmering levels, the jewel-green marshes, the wide, slow waters, and
at last upon the Atlantic shore the thunder of the rainbow-tinted surf.
Various and pleasing was the country. Springs and autumns were long
and balmy, the sun shone bright, there was much blue sky, a rich flora
and fauna. There were mineral wealth and water power, and breadth
and depth for agriculture. Such was the Virginia between the Potomac
and the Dan, the Chesapeake and the Alleghanies.
This, and not the gold-bedight slim neighbor of Cathay, was now the
lure of the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. But
those aboard, obsessed by Spanish America, imperfectly knowing the
features and distances of the orb, yet clung to their first vision. But they

knew there would be forest and Indians. Tales enough had been told of
both!
What has to be imaged is a forest the size of Virginia. Here and there,
chiefly upon river banks, show small Indian clearings. Here and there
are natural meadows, and toward the salt water great marshes, the home
of waterfowl. But all these are little or naught in the whole, faint
adornments sewed upon a shaggy garment, green in summer,
flame-hued in autumn, brown in winter, green and flower-colored in
the spring. Nor was the forest to any appreciable extent like much
Virginian forest of today, second growth, invaded, hewed down, and
renewed, to hear again the sound of the axe, set afire by a thousand
accidents, burning upon its own funeral pyres, all its primeval glory
withered. The forest of old Virginia was jocund and powerful, eternally
young and eternally old. The forest was Despot in the land--was
Emperor and Pope.
With the forest went the Indian. They had a pact together. The Indians
hacked out space for their villages of twenty or thirty huts, their maize
and bean fields and tobacco patches. They took saplings for poles and
bark to cover the huts and wood for fires. The forest gave canoe and
bow and arrow, household bowls and platters, the sides of the drum that
was beaten at feasts. It furnished trees serviceable for shelter when the
foe was stalked. It was their wall and roof, their habitat. It was one of
the Four Friends of the Indians--the Ground, the Waters, the Sky, the
Forest. The forest was everywhere, and the Indians dwelled in the
forest. Not unnaturally, they held that this world was theirs.
Upon the three ships, sailing, sailing, moved a few men who could
speak with authority of the forest and of Indians. Christopher Newport
was upon his first voyage to Virginia, but he knew the Indies and the
South American coast. He had sailed and had fought under Francis
Drake. And Bartholomew Gosnold had explored both for himself and
for Raleigh. These two could tell others what to look for. In their
company there was also John Smith. This gentleman, it is true, had not
wandered, fought, and companioned with romance in America, but he
had done so everywhere else. He had as yet no experience with Indians,
but he could conceive that rough experiences were rough experiences,
whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America. And as he knew there was
a family likeness among dangerous happenings, so also