Our capital town is advanced to about 150 very tolerable [satisfactory] houses for wooden ones; they are chiefly on both the navigable rivers that bound the ends or sides of the town. The farmers have got their winter corn in the ground. I suppose we may be 500 farmers strong. I settle them in villages, dividing 5,000 acres among ten, fifteen, or twenty families, as their ability is to plant it. . . .”

This passage from a letter William Penn wrote in 1683 describes his colony as _____.

A

growing and orderly

B

struggling and desperate

C

threatened and disorganized

D

unstable with failing farms

William Penn was the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania when English king Charles II gave William a charter. The king owned approximately 16,000 pounds to the family of Penn and he came to terms with him with the charter to establish a colony in the North American territory. In that letter, Penn was describing the orderly growth of the newly formed colony when he said: "Our capital town is advanced to about 150 very tolerable [satisfactory] houses for wooden ones; they are chiefly on both the navigable rivers that bound the ends or sides of the town. The farmers have got their winter corn in the ground. I suppose we may be 500 farmers strong. I settle them in villages, dividing 5,000 acres among ten, fifteen, or twenty families, as their ability is to plant it..."