“I recall the very pleasant visit I made your father. We were great friends and were at the Temple together. He says you desire my advice in the selection of a location. If you were a man of considerable means you might buy a plantation on the York or James River or in the Northern Neck; but he says you have less than a thousand pounds. I therefore advise that you ascend the James River in boats or canoes to Balcony Falls and then proceed overland into the Valley. There you and your wife as Scotch-Presbyterians will feel more at home than with the Conformist planters of Tidewater, Virginia. You know Virginia was settled by rural Englishmen, who brought their church and class distinctions with them. Class distinctions are more closely drawn in the Colony than in England; and in eastern Virginia it would be some time before you would be treated as a neighbor. Even though you are a kinsman of the Duke of Argyll, the women would never forget that your wife is the daughter of Dissenter McDonald. “Since 1745 Irish and Scotch Presbyterians have been pouring into the colony and traveling westward have settled in the valley between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, where they engage in raising cattle and growing wheat and Indian corn. They are democratic in their ideals, insisting upon religions freedom and self-government. On the other hand planters of the Tidewater country are satisfied with things as they are; as the law recognizes their church and they as social and political leaders rule the colony insofar as Parliament has delegated authority to the colonists. They live in great plantation houses conveniently near to navigable streams; so as to have access and a highway to the ocean. The streams swarm with small craft which furnish a way of social intercourse between plantations and a gateway to salt water. “About fifteen years ago eastern Virginia was very prosperous. It was the golden age of the planter. In 1758 the colony exported seventy thousand hogsheads of tobacco; but its culture is declining, labor is dearer, the land is becoming impoverished and there are threatened embargoes and even a prospect of war with the mother country; which would destroy the industry and bankrupt the planters, as its growing is almost wholly for export. The labor in its production is severe, the initial outlay is great and the plantations growing it buy all their food and forage. Its almost exclusive cultivation and facilities for water transportation has given a fictitious value to land along navigable streams and created the slave and bond-servant market, which in my opinion is a curse to Virginia. “I therefore advise that you cross the mountains into the Virginia Valley and there buy a considerable acreage, if possible partly improved, and engage in raising cattle and growing wheat and Indian corn, for which products there is always a demand and a local market.”