disappeared as soon as the soils along the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac rivers were exhausted.

George Arents, probably the foremost authority on the history of tobacco, in referring to Rolfe's first shipment to England wrote, "So fragrant was the leaf that it almost at once began to be known as 'sweet-scented.'" Ralph Hamor, in 1614, declared that the colony grew tobacco equal to that of Trinidad, "sweet and pleasant." Jerome E. Brooks wrote that Rolfe's importation of tobacco seed resulted in the famous Virginia sweet-scented leaf.

Once the cultivation began to spread into the areas away from the sandy loam along the James and York rivers, the type of soil necessary for the production of the sweet-scented, other varieties began to develop. In 1688 John Clayton wrote, "I have observed, that that which is called Pine-wood Land tho' it be a sandy soil, even the sweet-scented Tobacco that grows thereon, is large and porous, agreeable to Aranoko Tobacco; it smokes as coursely as Aranoko." While on his visit to Virginia, Clayton visited a poor, worn-out plantation along the James River. The owner, a widow, complained to him that her land would produce only four or five leaves of tobacco per plant. Clayton suggested that one of the bogs on the plantation be drained and planted in tobacco. A few years later Clayton happened to meet this same lady in London, selling the first crop of tobacco grown on the drained bog. She related to Clayton that the product was "so very large, that it was suspected to be of the Aranoko kind...."

In 1724 Hugh Jones observed that the farther a person went northward from the York or southward from the James, the poorer the quality of the sweet-scented tobacco, "but this maybe (I believe) attributed in some Measure to the Seed and Management, as well as to the Land and Latitude." John Custis in a letter to Philip Perry in 1737 wrote that he grew Oronoco on the Eastern Shore of Virginia using the same seed as he did for his sweet-scented York crop. It appears that as the sandy loam necessary for the growing of sweet-scented tobacco became exhausted and the planters expanded into the heavy fertile soils, the tobacco became the strong, coarse Oronoco. As virgin soil became scarce, Oronoco was no longer confined to the richest soils, nor was it thought to be less sweet-scented than its rivals. Toward the end of the eighteenth century tobacco inspectors found it so difficult to distinguish the various types, that they classed all tobacco as Oronoco. Thus it seems quite possible that both Oronoco and sweet-scented were originally one variety which became two, primarily because of the different soil composition.

Transportation To Market

In the early days of the colony the small ocean-going merchant vessel was the only method of transportation essential to marketing the tobacco crop. Such a small ship was able to anchor at many of the plantation wharves and load its cargo of tobacco. Next to fertility, the proximity to navigable water was the most important factor in influencing the planter in the selection of a tract of land. However, later expansion of the tobacco industry into the interior and the increase in the size of all ocean-going ships made some mode of transportation within the colony a necessity. When the ships could not get directly up to the wharf or enter shallow creeks on which many of the plantations were located, small boats called flats or shallops were used to transport the hogsheads to the anchored vessels. In 1633 the General Assembly provided that all tobacco had to be brought to one of the five warehouses—to be erected in specified localities—to be stored until sold. The planters objected immediately and petitioned the House of Burgesses to allow ships to come into every county, "where they will find at every man's house a store convenient enough for theire ladinge, we beinge all seated by the Riverside." The planters also complained that they had "... noe other means to export but by Boatinge."

Carrying the tobacco for long distances in the shallop involved a risk, as well as an additional expense. By rolling the hogsheads directly on board a ship anchored at his own wharf or only a few miles away the planter eliminated the danger involved in transporting his tobacco in an untrustworthy, heavily laden shallop, and he also saved the increase in freight charges for delivery to the ships by the seamen. Freight rates were the same from his wharf to England as they were from any other point in the colony.

In 1697 Henry Hartwell remarked, "they [the merchants] are at the charge of carting this tobacco ... [collected from the planter,] to convenient Landinge; or if it lyes not far from these landings, they must trust to the Seamen for their careful rolling it on board of their sloops and shallops...." A second common mode of transportation, according to Philip A. Bruce, was "not to draw the cask over the ground by means of horses or oxen, like an enormous clod crusher, the custom of a later period, but to propel it by the application of a steady force from behind." In 1724 Hugh Jones wrote, "The tobacco is rolled, drawn by horses, or carted to convenient Rolling Houses, whence it is conveyed on board the ships in flats or sloops." Thus it appears that by 1700 the Tidewater planters had adopted three methods of transporting their tobacco to market or to points of exportation: by rolling the hogshead, by cart, and by boat.

By the middle of the eighteenth century planters in the Piedmont were rolling their tobacco to the distant Tidewater markets, whereas the Tidewater planter usually hauled his tobacco by wagon. Rolling tobacco more than 100 miles was not out of the ordinary. The ingenious upland planters placed some extra hickory hoops around the hogshead, attached two hickory limbs for shafts, by driving pegs into the headings, and hitched a horse or oxen to it. This method worked quite well except that the tobacco was frequently damaged by the mud, water, or sand. To prevent this, the hogshead was raised off the ground by a device called a felly. This device consisted of segments of wood fitted together to form a circle resembling the rim of a cartwheel; these segments were fitted around the circumference of the hogshead. The hogsheads used for rolling in this manner were constructed much more substantially than those wagoned or transported by boat.

For the river trade the Piedmont planter once again relied upon his ingenuity. Around 1740 a rather unique water carrier was perfected by the Reverend Robert Rose, then living in Albemarle County. Two canoes fifty or sixty feet long were lashed together with cords and eight or nine hogsheads of tobacco were rolled on their gunwales crossways for the trip to Richmond. This came to be known as the "Rose method." For the return trip the canoes were separated and two men with poles could travel twice the distance in a day as four good oarsmen could propel a boat capable of carrying the same burden. Before 1795 boats coming down the James River from the back country landed at Westham, located just above the falls, and the tobacco was then carried into Richmond by wagon. There is the story of one planter who forgot to land his canoes at Westham. It seems that he left his plantation on the upper James with a load of tobacco and a jug full of whiskey. By the time he reached Westham the planter had consumed too much of the whiskey, and forgot to land at Westham. He rode his canoes, tobacco and all, over the Falls. Shortly thereafter he was fished from the waters downstream, wet and frightened, but sober.

By 1800, owing to the fact that both the planters and buyers had become more concerned about the quality of tobacco, rolling tobacco in hogsheads began to decline sharply, although fifty years later a rare roller might still be seen on his way to market. The