Her
tobacco was of lower grade, partly because of her long delay in providing
public inspection; her people in consequence were generally less
prosperous, her plantations fewer in proportion to her farms, and her
labor supply more largely of convicts and other white servants and
correspondingly less of negroes. But aside from these variations in degree
the developments and tendencies in the one were virtually those of the
other.
Before the end of the seventeenth century William Fitzhugh of Virginia
wrote that his plantations were being worked by "fine crews" of negroes,
the majority of whom were natives of the colony. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges
owned 108 slaves, John Carter 106, Ralph Wormeley 91, Robert Beverly 42,
Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., 40, and various other proprietors proportionate
numbers.[20] The conquest of the wilderness was wellnigh complete on
tidewater, and the plantation system had reached its full type for
the Chesapeake latitudes. Broad forest stretches divided most of the
plantations from one another and often separated the several fields on
the same estate; but the cause of this was not so much the paucity of
population as the character of the land and the prevalent industry.
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