The only exception was the
country immediately below the southern banks of the lower James with the
promontory that partially closed in Chesapeake Bay. Virginia, growing fast,
at last sent her children into this region. In 1653 the Assembly enacted:
"Upon the petition of Roger Green, clarke, on the behalfe of himselfe and
inhabitants of Nansemund river, It is ordered by this present Grand
Assembly that tenn thousand acres of land be granted unto one hundred such
persons who shall first seate on Moratuck or Roanoke river and the land
lying upon the south side of Choan river and the ranches thereof, Provided
that such seaters settle advantageously for security and be sufficiently
furnished with amunition and strength . . . ."
Green and his men, well furnished presumably with firelocks, bullets, and
powder-horns, went into this hinterland. At intervals there followed other
hardy folk. Quakers, subject to persecution in old Virginia, fled into
these wilds. The name Carolina grew to mean backwoods, frontiersman's land.
Here were forest and stream, Indian and bear and wolf, blue waters of sound
and sea, long outward lying reefs and shoals and islets, fertile soil and a
clime neither hot nor cold. Slowly the people increased in number. Families
left settled Virginia for the wilderness; men without families came there
for reasons good and bad. Their cabins, their tiny hamlets were far apart;
they practised a hazardous agriculture; they hunted, fished, and traded
with the Indians.
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