In Virginia the statutes compelled ships to stop at Jamestown, or other designated ports, before breaking bulk at the private landings along the river. Who can picture the excitement in those lonely plantations when the frigate tied up at the wharf, and began to unload from its hold, its cargo of tools for the farm, furniture for the house, and, best of all, the square white letters with big round seals, containing news of the friends distant a three months' journey! Sometimes the new comer would prove no ocean voyager, but a nearer neighbor, some stout, round-sterned packet, from New Netherland or New England, laden with grain and rum, or hides and rum, to be exchanged for the tobacco of the Old Dominion. To journey from one colony to another thus, the trader must first secure a license and take oath that he would not sell or give arms or ammunition to the Indians. On these terms Lord Baltimore, in 1637, granted to a merchant mariner, liberty "to trade and commerce for corn, beaver or any other commodities with the Dutchmen on Hudson's river, or with any Indians or other people whatsoever being or inhabiting to the northward, without the capes commonly called Cape Henry and Cape Charles." Long after the waters of Chesapeake Bay were dotted with sails, and the creeks of Maryland and Virginia gay with skiffs, the land communication was still in an exceedingly primitive condition. The roads were little more than bridle-paths. The surveyors deemed their duty done if the logs and fallen trees were cleared away, and all Virginia could not boast of a single engineer. Bridges there were none; and the traveller, arriving at a river bank, must find a ford, or swim his horse across, counting himself fortunate if he kept his pouch of tobacco dry. Planters at a distance from the rivers hewed out rolling-roads, on which they brought down their tobacco in casks, attached to the horses that drew them by hoop-pole shafts. Roads, winding along the streams, were slowly laid out, and answered well enough in fair weather, but in storms they were impassable, and at night so bewildering that belated travellers were forced to come to a halt, make a fire, and bivouac till morning. In 1704, the roads in Maryland were so poor that we find the Assembly passing an act declaring that "the roads leading to any county court-house shall have two notches on the trees on both sides of the roads, and another notch a distance above the other two; and any road that leads to any church shall be marked, into the entrance of the same, and at the leaving any other road, with a slip cut down the face of the tree near the ground." Guide-posts were still unknown.