In the boundaries of the present State of North Carolina there were found, upon the first discovery, enormous forests of pine trees extending in some parts over a circuit of sixty miles,[1] but in the territory coincident with that of modern Virginia, these trees were only very numerous on the coast and along the shores of the Bay, and at the mouths of the larger streams. The observations of subsequent times have shown that the pine is principally a tree of secondary growth in this division of the State. That as a rule it was dispersed at the period of the earliest settlement is disclosed by the fact, that in a communication from the authorities in Virginia to the Company in London, written in 1622, the statement is made that pitch and tar could never become staple commodities of the Colony because the pines were so scattered that it would be unprofitable to bring them together.[2] The finest specimens of this tree discovered by the earliest settlers were found on the general line of shore lying on the southern side of the modern Hampton Roads.[3] An accurate notion
- ↑ Virginia Richly Valued, p. 25, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. The great resources of the present State of North Carolina in pitch and tar were anticipated as early as 1621 (O. S.) by George Sandys, the treasurer of Virginia. See his letter of March 3, printed in Neill’s English Colonization of America, p. 154.
- ↑ Letter of the Governor and Council in Virginia to the Company, January, 1621 (O. S.), Neill’s Virginia Company of London, p. 283.
- ↑ “So setting Sayle (that is, from Point Comfort) for the Southern Shore, we sayled up a narrow river up the country of Chesapeack. . . . By that we had sayled six or seaven myles, we saw . . . the shores over growne with the greatest pyne and firre trees wee ever saw in the Country.” Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 431. Some conception of the striking character of the pine forests that Smith saw on the shores of the modern Elizabeth River may be obtained from the noble grove of these trees which now flourishes in the rear of the National Naval Hospital at Portsmouth, forming the most interesting part of the reservation. It is probable that the ground covered by this grove has never been under cultivation, and that these lofty and stately pines are the scions of those upon which the Englishman gazed in passing in 1608.
