CHAPTER IV
AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT, 1607-1624
The first ground within the boundaries of the commonwealth of Virginia as it stands to-day, which was broken by an English agricultural implement, was at Jamestown. That place was chosen as the site of the earliest settlement only because it offered extraordinary advantages for defence against the assault of a European foe, whether advancing by the river or by the mainland. It conformed in but one respect to the order given by the Council for the guidance of the voyagers in selecting a spot for the establishment of the projected community: it was virtually an island, a short and narrow peninsula uniting it to the northern bank of the Powhatan.[1] Such insularity was considered by the Company in England to be necessary to the safety of the settlement. A site less favorable from several important points of view for the successful foundation of a colony in Virginia could not have been chosen by those who had that mission to execute. In summer the extensive marshes close at hand poisoned the
- ↑ Francis Maguel, in his report on Virginia to the Spanish Council of State in 1610, mentions that after building their fort, the English determined to cut through this point so that the water should surround them on all sides. Spanish Archives, Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 394. When Clayton visited Jamestown in 1688, the island was joined to the “continent by a small neck of land not past twenty or thirty yards over, and which at spring tides was overflowed.” Clayton’s Virginia, p. 23, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
