As the colony developed, the typical dwelling became a framed log building of moderate size, with a big chimney at each end, there being no cellar and the house resting on the ground. The upper and lower floors were each divided into two rooms. Such a house, built in 1679, measuring forty by twenty feet, cost twelve hundred pounds of tobacco. Finally, when more prosperity came in the eighteenth century, the houses were developed and enlarged into more pretentious edifices, built of bricks brought out from England. These were the great colonial houses of the wealthy planters, so many of which exist until the present day. The most prosperous time in colonial Virginia was the period from 1710 until 1770. The exports of tobacco to England and flour and other produce to the West Indies made the fortunes of the planters, so that their vast estates and large retinues of slaves made them the lordly barons whose fame spread throughout Europe, while their wealth enabled them to gather all the luxuries of furniture and ornament for their houses then attainable. It was in these noble colonial mansions, surrounded by regiments of negro servants, that the courtly Virginians of the olden time dispensed a princely hospitality, limited only by their ability to secure whatever the world produced. The stranger was always welcome at the bountiful board, and the slave children grew up amid plenty, hardly knowing what work was. This went on with more or less variation until the Civil War made its tremendous upheaval, which scattered both whites and blacks. But the typical Virginian is unchanged, continuing as open-hearted and hospitable, though his means now are much less. To all he has, the guest is welcome; but it is usually with a tinge of regret that he recalls the good old time when he might have done more. HAMPTON ROADS AND FORTRESS MONROE.