But Englishmen in Virginia had the
familiar emigrant idea of making their fortunes. They had left England;
they had taken their lives in their hands; they had suffered fevers, Indian
attacks, homesickness, deprivation. They had come to Virginia to get rich.
Now clapboards and sassafras, pitch, tar, and pine trees for masts, were
making no fortune for Virginia shippers. How could they, these few folk far
off in America, compete in products of the forest with northern Europe? As
to mines of gold and silver, that first rich vision had proved a
disheartening mirage. "They have great hopes that the mountains are very
rich, from the discovery of a silver mine made nineteen years ago, at a
place about four days' journey from the falls of James river; but they have
not the means of transporting the ore." So, dissatisfied with some means of
livelihood and disappointed in others, the Virginians turned to tobacco.
Every year each planter grew more tobacco; every year more ships were
laden. In 1628 more than five hundred thousand pounds were sent to England,
for to England it must go, and not elsewhere. There it must struggle with
the best Spanish, for a long time valued above the best Virginian. Finally,
however, James and after him Charles, agreed to exclude the Spanish.
Virginia and the Somers Islands alone might import tobacco into England.
But offsetting this, customs went up ruinously; a great lump sum must go
annually to the King; the leaf must enter only at the port of London; so
forth and so on.
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