The early colonists were very much puzzled by finding in Virginia large blocks resembling English millstones, but which in composition were neither metal nor ordinary masses of rock. These blocks were enormous conglomerates of marine shells, but as they were so far from the shore, their origin seemed to be veiled in obscurity.[1] Here and there were observed extensive banks of scallops and oyster-shells, which lay unopened and as thickly grouped as if they had formed at one time a part of the flooring of the sea.[2] Many years after the foundation of Jamestown, the remains of unknown animals of huge dimensions were brought to light in digging below the surface of the earth; these were the bones of the mastodon, or some huge sea monster, which had been deposited in the original sediment, and probably caused even greater wonder and speculation among the colonists than the accumulation of shells in the interior of the country.[3]
- ↑ Clayton was doubtful as to whether these conglomerates were petrified shells or “natural rock shot in those figures.” He was disposed tobelieve they were the latter, Clayton’s Virginia, p. 18, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. This opinion he repeated: “I do not apprehend why it may not be as feasible to suppose them to have been rocks at first shot into those figures as to conceive the sea to have amassed such a vast number of oyster-shells one upon another and afterwards subsiding should leave them covered with such mountains of earth under which they should petrify.” Ibid., p. 15.
- ↑ Strachey’s Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 32. Strachey recognized the true cause of these accumulations of shells. “All the lowland of South and North Virginia,” he remarked, “is conjectured to have been naturally gayned out of the sea.”
- ↑ Neill’s Virginia Carolorum, p. 131. See also Clayton’s Virginia, p. 15, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
of Argoll to Nicholas Hawes, June, 1613, Purchas’ Pilgrimage, vol. IV, pp. 1764-1765. In 1688 the Secretary of State of the Colony, Nicholas Spencer, informed Rev. John Clayton, who was then on a visit to Virginia, that “there was vitriolick or alluminous earth on the banks of Potomack.” Clayton’s Virginia, p. 27, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
