is obtained as to the length and girth of these specimens, when it is recalled that the ship Starr, which was sent to Virginia in 1612 to transport masts to England, and which was specially arranged for that purpose in the way of its decks and scupper holes, was unable to store even forty of the four-score trunks which it was designed to carry, until they had been cut short with an axe.[1]
The walnut was as common in aboriginal Virginia as the elm in England; it was stated that at least one-fourth of its forests belonged to this species of tree.[2] Three varieties were present, of which the black walnut was afterwards found to be the most valuable, because particularly adapted to the manufacture of furniture. It had a grain of remarkable delicacy that took a polish of extreme fineness, and in color it resembled ebony, and was not subject to the attacks of worms.[3] Still more numerous were the oaks, which constituted the noblest form of vegetable life in the new country. So lofty and erect were many of these trees and so great their diameter, that their trunks afforded plank twenty yards in length, and two and a half feet square.[4] There were several varieties, the red, black, white, chestnut, and Spanish, and also the liveoak, which dropped its acorns through the greater part of the year. There was one characteristic of this species of tree, often observed since, that made it at times an object of curious interest to the early colonists; in cutting down
- ↑ Strachey’s Historie of Travails into Virginia, p. 130.
- ↑ Virginia Richly Valued, p. 15, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. Spelman’s Relation of Virginia, p. cvi. At this time the hickory was also known as the walnut, which accounts for the abundance, according to the early writers, of walnut trees in aboriginal Virginia. It also explains the number of the varieties.
- ↑ Strachey’s Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 129.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 56.
