In 1630 a second captured cargo was
sold in the colony, and from 1635 onward small lots were imported nearly
every year.[10] Part of these came from England, part from New Netherland
and most of the remainder doubtless from the West Indies. In 1649 Virginia
was reckoned to have some three hundred negroes mingled with its fifteen
thousand whites.[11] After two decades of a somewhat more rapid importation
Governor Berkeley estimated the gross population in 1671 at forty thousand,
including six thousand white servants and two thousand negro slaves.[12]
Ere this there was also a small number of free negroes. But not until
near the end of the century, when the English government had restricted
kidnapping, when the Virginia assembly had forbidden the bringing in of
convicts, and when the direct trade from Guinea had reached considerable
dimensions, did the negroes begin to form the bulk of the Virginia
plantation gangs.
[Footnote 8: John Smith _Works_, Arber ed., p. 541.]
[Footnote 9: Tabulated in the _Virginia Magazine_, VII, 364-367.]
[Footnote 10: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 72-77.]
[Footnote 11: _A New Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649).
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