scape of sand and rock. To have soil they must
pulverize rock. Nature said to these exiles from a rich soil, with her
sternest voice,--"Here is no streaming breast: sand with no gold mined:
all the wealth you get must be mined from your own hearts and coined by
your own right hands!"

How different was it in Virginia! Old John Rolfe, the husband of
Pocahontas, writing to the King in 1616, said,--"Virginia is the same as
it was, I meane for the goodness of the scate, and the fertilenesse of
the land, and will, no doubt, so continue to the worlds end,--a countrey
as worthy of good report as can be declared by the pen of the best
writer; a countrey spacious and wide, capable of many hundred thousands
of inhabitants." It must be borne in mind that Rolfe's idea of an
inhabitant's needs was that he should own a county or two to begin with,
which will account for his moderate estimate of the number that could be
accommodated upon a hundred thousand square miles. He continues,--"For
the soil, most fertile to plant in; for ayre, fresh and temperate,
somewhat hotter in summer, and not altogether so cold in winter as in
England, yet so agreable is it to our constitutions that now 't is more
rare to hear of a man's death than in England; for water, most wholesome
and verie plentifull; and for fayre navigable rivers and good harbors,
no countrey in Christendom, in so small a circuite, is so well stored."
Any one who has passed through the State, or paid any attention to its
resources, may go far beyond the old settler's statement. Virginia is a
State combining, as in some divinely planned garden, every variety of
soil known on earth, resting under a sky that Italy alone can match,
with a Valley anticipating in vigor the loam of the prairies: up to that
Valley and Piedmont stretch throughout the State navigable rivers, like
fingers of the Ocean-hand, ready to bear to all marts the produce of
the soil, the superb vein of gold, and the iron which, unlocked from
mountain-barriers, could defy competition. But in her castle Virginia is
still, a sleeping beauty awaiting the hero whose kiss shall recall her
to life. Comparing what free labor has done for the granite rock called
Massachusetts, and what slave labor has done for the enchanted garden
called Virginia, one would say, that, though the Dutch ship that brought
to our shores the Norway rat was bad, and that which brought the Hessian
fly was worse, the most fatal ship that ever cast an