CHAPTER II

VIRGINIA UNDER THE VIRGINIA COMPANY

An exhaustive account of the reasons which induced the colonization of Virginia is given in the first chapter of Mr Bruce’s Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century. The persistency with which the same reasons are put forward in the various pamphlets and letters of the time attest the strength of the forces at work. The first and the strongest motive at work was the thirst for gold. The trea­sures obtained by Spain had dazzled the popular imagination, and every man seemed to hold El Dorado within his grasp. A second motive and one coupled by Lane , 1 with the dis­covery of a gold mine, as the sole possible means of mak­ing the country in request in England, as a desirable place for settlement, was the discovery of the North-west passage. An imperfect knowledge of geography led to the notion that there was little distance between Virginia and the Western sea. Could this hope have been realised, it is obvious of what importance Virginia would have been in the days before the thorough opening out of the Cape of Good Hope route to the Indies. The other main motives were of a less chimerical character . 2 It was expected that Virginia would supply a large number of articles which the English people could at that time only buy from foreign nations ; tar, pitch, rosin, flax, cordage, masts, yards, timber, and other naval stores, besides glass and soap ashes might be furnished from a British Colony instead of from Russia and Poland. All kinds of difficulties, natural and artificial, stood in the way of the Baltic trade, but Virginia promised to fur­nish the products both of Northern and Southern Europe.

1 Hakluyt’s Voyages, Vol. III.

2 ‘Nova Britannia’ in Force’s Historical Tracts , Vol. I.

Coloniza­tion of Virginia.