of acres subject to a quit-rent. Men of means and influence obtained great
holdings; ownership, rental, sale, and purchase of the land began in
Virginia much as in older times it had begun in England. Only here, in
America, where it seemed that the land could never be exhausted, individual
holdings were often of great acreage. Thus arose the Virginia Planter.

In Yeardley's time John Berkeley established at Falling Creek the first
iron works ever set up in English-America. There were by this time in
Virginia, glass works, a windmill, iron works. To till the soil remained
the chief industry, but the tobacco culture grew until it overshadowed the
maize and wheat, the pease and beans. There were cattle and swine, not a
few horses, poultry, pigeons, and peacocks.

In 1621 Yeardley, desiring to be relieved, was succeeded by Sir Francis
Wyatt. In October the new Governor came from England in the George, and
with him a goodly company. Among others is found George Sandys, brother of
Sir Edwyn. This gentleman and scholar, beneath Virginia skies and with
Virginia trees and blossoms about him, translated the "Metamorphoses" of
Ovid and the First Book of the "Aeneid", both of which were published in
London in 1626. He stands as the first purely literary man of the English
New World. But vigorous enough literature, though the writers thereof
regarded it as information only, had, from the first years, emanated from
Virginia. Smith's "True Relation", George Percy's "Discourse", Strachey's
"True Repertory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates", and
his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia Brittannia", Hamor's "True
Discourse", Whitaker's "Good News"--other letters and reports--had already
flowered, all with something of the strength and fragrance of Elizabethan
and early Jacobean work.

For some years there had seemed peace with the Indians. Doubtless members