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[209] careless traveller and the straggling huntsman were
Chap VI.}
long in danger of being intercepted,1 yet ten men were considered a sufficient force to protect a place of danger.2

About fifteen months after Berkeley's return from

1646 Oct.
England, articles of peace were established between the inhabitants of Virginia and Necotowance, the successor of Opechancanough.3 Submission and a cession of lands were the terms on which the treaty was purchased by the original possessors of the soil, who now began to vanish away from the immediate vicinity of the settlements of their too formidable invaders. It is one of the surprising results of moral power, that language, composed of fleeting sounds, retains and transmits the remembrance of past occurrences, long after every other monument has passed away. Of the labors of the Indians on the soil of Virginia, there remains nothing so respectable as would be a common ditch for the draining of lands;4 the memorials of their former existence are found only in the names of the rivers and the mountains. Unchanging nature retains the appellations which were given by those whose villages have disappeared, and whose tribes have become extinct.

Thus the colony of Virginia acquired the management of all its concerns; war was levied, and peace concluded, and territory acquired, in conformity to the acts of the representatives of the people. Possessed of security and quiet, abundance of land, a free market for their staple, and, practically, all the rights of an independent state, having England for its guardian

1 Hening, i. 300, 301, Act 3.

2 Ibid. 285, 286, Act 5.

3 Ibid. 323—326. Compare Drake's Indian Biography, b. IV. 22—24; Johnson's Wonder-working Providence, b. III. c. XI.

4 Jefferson's Notes, 132.

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