We have seen how the people who came first to North America expected to find either a way to India or mines like those discovered farther southward. But when they found that they could not secure either the spices of India or the gold and silver of Peru, they turned their attention to the soil, to see what could be got by farming. But at first their plans for farming in America were as wild as their plans for getting to India. They spent much time in trying to produce silk and wine, two things which can be raised with profit only in old and well-settled countries. They also tried to raise madder, coffee, tea, olives, and the cacao nut, from which chocolate is made.

John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, in 1612 took a lesson from the American Indian fields about him, and succeeded in growing tobacco for the English market. Before this time, English smokers and snuff-takers got their tobacco from the Spaniards. The plant was well suited to the Virginia climate, and it was easy to ship tobacco from the farms, which were all on the banks of the rivers. Gold and silver coins were scarce in those days, and, in half a dozen years after John Rolfe planted the first tobacco, it had become the only money of Virginia. Almost everything bought and sold in Virginia and Maryland, before the Revolution, was paid for in tobacco.

The colony of South Carolina maintained itself in a rather poor way, during the first twenty-six years of its existence, chiefly by shipping lumber to the West Indies, and by making tar and pitch. But there was living in Charleston, in 1696, a gentleman named Thomas Smith, who had seen rice cultivated in Madagascar. One day when a sea-captain, an old friend of Smith's, sailed into Charleston Harbor from Madagascar, Thomas Smith got from him a bag of seed-rice. This was carefully sown in a wet place in Smith's garden in Charleston. It grew, and soon Carolina was changed into a land of great rice-plantations. The raising of rice spread into Georgia when that colony was settled.

In 1741 an energetic young lady, Miss Eliza Lucas, began to try experiments in growing the indigo-plant in South Carolina. A frost destroyed the first crop that she planted, and a worm cut down the next. The indigo-maker brought from the West Indies tried to deceive her afterward, but by 1745 this persevering young lady had proved that indigo could be grown in South Carolina, and in two years more two hundred thousand pounds of it were exported. It was a leading crop for about fifty years, but, when the growing of cotton was made profitable by the invention of the cotton-gin, that crop took the place of indigo.

Indian corn the settlers got from the American Indians. It was unknown in Europe. From it was made the most of the bread eaten by Americans before the Revolution. It was also shipped to the West Indies from Virginia and North Carolina. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania formed the great wheat region of the colonial time. These colonies sent wheat, flour, and "hard-tack" bread in large quantities to the West Indies and the countries on the Mediterranean Sea. Many thousands of great country wagons were employed in bringing grain to Philadelphia. Potatoes had been brought to Europe probably from South America; but they were unknown to the American Indians in what is now the United States. They were taken to Virginia at the first settlement of Jamestown. Potatoes were not planted in New England fields until 1718.

Cattle and hogs were brought from England very early, and were grown by thousands in the colonies. For the most part they ran in the woods, having marks on them to show to whom they belonged. Many cattle grew up without marks of ownership, and were hunted as wild. There were cow-pens established for raising cattle in the wilderness, something like the ranches in the Western country today. The horses of that day were small and hardy. When not in use they ran at large in the woods, and some of them quite escaped from their owners, so that after a while there came to be a race of wild horses. It was accounted rare sport to ride after a wild horse until he was tired out, and so to capture him.

The English plow of that time was very heavy, and drawn by six horses or as many oxen. Efforts were made to introduce this to the colonies, but it was not suited to a new country. The plow most used in the colonies was a clumsy thing, with thin plates of iron nailed over the rudimentary wooden plowshares. There were many stumps and few plows. All the tools were heavy and awkward. The middle colonies raised wheat, the colonies on Chesapeake Bay tobacco, and the Southern colonies rice and indigo; but the soil and climate of New England were not suited to any agricultural staple of great value. So the New Englanders were driven to follow the sea. They built immense numbers of ships, some of which they sold to English merchants; others they used in fishing for codfish and mackerel. These fisheries became very profitable to them. When the Long-Islanders discovered the art of taking whales along the coast, the New England people learned it, and became the most prosperous whalers in the world. The products of their fisheries were sent to many countries, and New England ships were seen almost all over the world. Boston and Newport were the chief New England seaports.

The people of New York also built many ships which were remarkable for their great size and the long voyages they made. But before the Revolution New York was not so large a town as Boston. Philadelphia, which was started later than the other leading cities, grew fast and became the greatest of all the cities in the colonies. But Philadelphia contained only about thirty thousand people when the Revolution broke out.

There were many pirates on the coast, who sometimes grew so numerous and bold as to interrupt trade. Some of them were caught and hanged. Captain Kidd, of New York, who was sent to put down pirates, became a pirate himself, and was taken to London and there hanged. The most noted of the pirates was a cruel desperado called Blackbeard, who was killed after a bloody fight in Ocracoke Inlet in North Carolina. Steed Bonnet, another famous pirate, was captured about the same time and executed at Charleston.



CAPTAIN KIDD AND THE PIRATES

Captain William Kidd, of New York, was sent out in 1695 to put down the pirates that infested the Indian Ocean. The expense of his outfit was borne by certain gentlemen in America and England, who were to share his spoils. Not falling in with any pirates, he took to piratical ways himself. When he came back to America, he was arrested by Lord Bellemont, Governor of New York and New England, and sent to London for trial and execution. In 1717, Steed Bonnet and Richard Worley, two pirates with their crews, had taken possession of the mouth of Cape Fear River in North Carolina, whence they committed great depredations on the commerce of South Carolina. Colonel Rhett, of South Carolina, pursued Bonnet into Cape Fear River, and, after a fight, captured him and thirty of his men. They were tried and hanged at Charleston. Governor Johnson, of South Carolina, took another vessel and attacked Richard Worley and his pirates, who fought until all were dead but Worley and one man, and these were taken, desperately wounded, and hanged. Blackbeard, whose real name was Teach, had his refuge also in the shallow waters of the North Carolina coast. A little more than a year after the overthrow of Bonnet, Lieutenant Maynard sailed from Virginia and fought Blackbeard in Ocracoke Inlet. After a hand-to-hand battle all the pirates were killed or wounded, and Maynard sailed back with Blackbeard's head hanging at his bowsprit. So many of the pirates were captured in the next half-dozen years that they gave little trouble afterward.