tion" that he
purchased a plantation at Curles Neck, on the James, forty miles above
Jamestown, and a tract of land at the site of Richmond, on what was
then the frontier. "When first I designed Virginia my chiefest aims
were a further inquiry into those western parts in order to which I
chose to seat myself so remote," he said, "I having always been
delighted in solitude."

Bacon had been in Virginia but a few months when the governor
appointed him to the Council of State. This seemed a great honor
indeed for a young man of twenty-eight. But Berkeley explained:
"Gentlemen of your quality come very rarely into this country, and
therefore when they do come are used by me with all respect." Bacon
was greatly surprised. "As to anything of public employment in the
country, my tender age and manner of living, not free from follies and
youthful excesses, forbad me to hope or expect any such thing.... This
sudden change were enough to stagger a philosopher of more settled
temper than I am."

But it was not possible for the dictatorial governor and the hotheaded
youth to get along together. Berkeley was accustomed to having
obedience in return for favors. Bacon was not the man to knuckle
under. It was prophetic of what was to follow that the first
difference grew out of relations with the allied Indians. When poor
immigrants took up holdings on the frontier rather than become tenants
to wealthy men in the east, they encroached on the reservations of
those Indian tribes which were under the protection of the government.
They even laid out farms within the very limits of their villages.
When the Indians, driven by hunger, killed any of their cattle or
hogs, the frontiersmen "beat and abused them."

Apparently it was a dispute with the Indians which caused the first
temporary breach between Bacon and Berkeley. We do not know just what
happened, but Bacon in a letter to the Governor speaks of his
"unbecoming deportment in your Honor's presence," and said he was
sorry for it. Sir William's reply makes it probable that Bacon had
suffered some losses from neighboring Indians, and had retaliated.
"This sudden business of the Indians," Berkeley said, had raised in
him "high distemper." And he asked Bacon to consider that relations
between the whites and the Indians was his responsibility, so that it
was important that he be advised of all dealings with them. Should
there be serious trouble he would be criticised both in England and