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