new region to displace foreign nations in furnishing England with many of the commodities that its people were compelled to import. It is not at all surprising in the light of this concurring testimony, which only grew stronger as Virginia was more fully explored, that one of the main objects the London Company had in view in its formation, was to secure the trade in the articles enumerated, now carried on with Russia, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and even Persia. It was impossible, however, for that corporation to absorb a large part of this trade until the Colony had been firmly established, and the population had increased to considerable proportions. Eager for the immediate profit which Smith had so justly condemned,[1] the Company permitted itself to be diverted from the steady development of its true sources of gain by expectations of finding gold or discovering a route to the South Sea. During the time it was under the spell of these hopes, it seems to have made only a small attempt to turn to account the natural elements of wealth in the Colony apart from the precious metals. In 1608 eight Dutchmen and Poles were dispatched to Virginia, who were to be employed in the manufacture of glass, pitch, tar, and soap ashes. When Captain Newport returned to England in the same year, he brought back, as a part of his cargo, the accumulation of these commodities which had been provided for him, and in his frame of mind at that time, they must have appeared to him rather poor substitutes for the lump of gold, the members of the lost colony, or the proof of the nearness of Virginia to the South Sea which he had, in leaving England, been commanded to find by the Company, the Company having been led to give him these
- ↑ Letter to Treasurer and Council of Virginia in England, Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 442.
