The
sandy expanses, and the occasional belts of clay likewise, had but a
surface fertility, and the cheapness of land prevented the conservation of
the soil. Hence the fields when rapidly exhausted by successive cropping in
tobacco were as a rule abandoned to broomsedge and scrub timber while new
and still newer grounds were cleared and cropped. Each estate therefore, if
its owner expected it to last a lifetime, must comprise an area in forestry
much larger than that at any one time in tillage. The great reaches of the
bay and the deep tidal rivers, furthermore, afforded such multitudinous
places of landing for ocean-going ships that all efforts to modify the
wholly rural condition of the tobacco colonies by concentrating settlement
were thwarted. It is true that Norfolk and Baltimore grew into consequence
during the eighteenth century; but the one throve mainly on the trade of
landlocked North Carolina, and the other on that of Pennsylvania. Not
until the plantation area had spread well into the piedmont hinterland did
Richmond and her sister towns near the falls on the rivers begin to focus
Virginia and Maryland trade; and even they had little influence upon life
on the tidewater peninsulas.
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