For its rough cultivation, each estate had a multitude of hands--of purchased and assigned servants--who were subject to the command of the master.

The land yielded their food, live stock, and game.

The great rivers swarmed with fish for the taking.

From their banks the passage home was clear.

Their ships took the tobacco off their private wharves on the banks of the Potomac or the James river, and carried it to London or Bristol,--bringing back English goods and articles of home manufacture in return for the only produce which the Virginian gentry chose to cultivate.