Later, in England and in Virginia, there was some suggestion that it might
be cultivated among other commodities. But the Company, not to be diverted
from the path to profits, demanded from Virginia necessities and not
new-fangled luxuries. Nevertheless, a little tobacco was sent over to
England, and then a little more, and then a larger quantity. In less than
five years it had become a main export; and from that time to this
profoundly has it affected the life of Virginia and, indeed, of the United
States.
This then is the wide and general event with which John Rolfe is connected.
But there is also a narrower, personal happening that has pleased all these
centuries. Indian difficulties yet abounded, but Dale, administrator as
well as man of Mars, wound his way skilfully through them all. Powhatan
brooded to one side, over there at Werowocomoco. Captain Samuel Argall was
again in Virginia, having brought over sixty-two colonists in his ship, the
Treasurer. A bold and restless man, explorer no less than mariner, he again
went trading up the Potomac, and visited upon its banks the village of
Japazaws, kinsman of Powhatan. Here he found no less a personage than
Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas. An idea came into Argall's active and
somewhat unscrupulous brain. He bribed Japazaws with a mighty gleaming
copper kettle, and by that chief's connivance took Pocahontas from the
village above the Potomac. He brought her captive in his boat down the
Chesapeake to the mouth of the James and so up the river to Jamestown, here
to be held hostage for an Indian peace.
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