establishment, as making and repairing ploughs, harrows, teeth, chains, bolts, etc.  The spinners, weavers, and knitters made all the coarse cloths and stockings used by the negroes, and some of fine texture worn by the white family, nearly all worn by the children of it.  The distiller made every fall a good deal of apple, peach, and persimmon brandy.  The art of distilling from grain was not then among us, and but few public distilleries.  All these operations were carried on at the home house, and their results distributed as occasion required to the different plantations.  Moreover, all the beeves and hogs for consumption or sale were driven up and slaughtered there at the proper seasons, and whatever was to be preserved was salted and packed away for distribution.”

Nevertheless the plantation drew upon the outside world for many articles, especially luxuries, and the owner had to find the wherewithal to make payment.  The almost universal answer to this problem was—­tobacco.  It was not an ideal answer, and historians have scolded the departed planters vigorously for doing the sum in that way, yet the planters were victims of circumstances.  They had no gold or silver mines from which to draw bullion that could be coined into cash; the fur trade was of little importance compared with that farther north; the Europe of that day raised sufficient meat and grain for its own use, and besides these articles were bulky and costly to transport.  But Europe did have a strong craving for the weed and, almost of necessity, Virginians set themselves to satisfying it.  They could hardly be expected to do otherwise when a pound of tobacco would often bring in England more than a bushel of wheat, while it cost only a sixtieth part as much to send it thither.  It is estimated that prior to the Revolution Virginia often sent out annually as much as ninety-six thousand hogsheads of tobacco.  Tobacco took the place of money, and debts, taxes and even ministers’ salaries were paid in it.

The disadvantages of tobacco culture are well known.  Of all crops it is perhaps the most exhausting to the soil, nor was a large part of Virginia particularly fertile to begin with.  Much land was speedily ruined, but nothing was so cheap and plentiful in that day as land, so the planter light-heartedly cleared more and let the old revert to the wilderness.  Any one who travels through the long settled parts of Virginia to-day will see many such old fields upon which large forest trees are now growing and can find there, if he will search closely enough, signs of the old tobacco ridges.  Only heroic measures and the expenditure of large sums for fertilizer could make such worn-out land again productive.  Washington himself described the character of the agriculture in words that can not be improved upon: