silver existed in Virginia in great quantities, the dissipation of which weakened the interest of a large and influential number of the members of the London Company in the Virginian colony,[1] John Smith alone of the prominent leaders had a proper conception of what were the true elements of wealth in the new country, although he acknowledged that the indications of the presence of the precious metals in Virginia were so strong as to justify the indulgence of the hope that they could be drawn from its soil. In 1608, however, when the colonists were wholly absorbed in the search for gold and silver, he offered a warm and impatient remonstrance in his deep vexation that all necessary business should be deferred until the ship, which was to sail to England, had been loaded with a cargo of the supposed ore.[2] When Captain Martin proposed, in the spring of 1609, to fill the Phœnix with a great quantity of the sparkling dirt, Smith urged that cedar should be substituted for it. He strove to impress upon the shareholders of the Company the fact that their expectations of an immediate profit were without reasonable ground to rest on. The letter, which he,
- ↑ Velasco the Spanish Ambassador in London, writing in May, 1613, to Philip III, said that they (i.e. the supporters of the Virginia enterprise) were discouraged, “on account of the heavy expenses they have incurred and the disappointment that there is no passage from there, i.e. Virginia, to the South Sea, as they had hoped, nor mines of gold or silver.” Again, in July of the same year, “this plantation has lost much ground, as it was sustained by companies of merchants, who were disappointed at finding no gold nor silver mine, nor the passage to the South Sea, which they had hoped for.” Brown’s Genesis of the United States, pp. 634, 638.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 408. “I have heard him (Smith) oft question with Captaine Martin and tell him except he could shew him a more substantiall triall he was not inamoured with their dusty skill, breathing out these and many other passions; never did anything more torment him than to see, all necessary business neglected to fraught such a drunken ship with so much guilded dirt.”
