workers who came in 1608 set up a furnace at Jamestown,[1-17] but
nothing more is heard of them, and it is clear that they met with no
success. Nor did Captain William Norton, who arrived in 1621 with a
number of skilled Italian glass workers fare any better.[1-18] In 1623
George Sandys wrote: "Capt. Norton dyed with all save one of his
servants, the Italians fell extremely sick yet recovered; but I conceave
they would gladly make the work to appear unfeasable, that they might by
that means be dismissed for England. The fier hath now been for six
weeks in ye furnace and yet nothing effected. They claim that the sand
will not run." Shortly after this the workmen brought matters to an end
by cracking the furnace with a crowbar.[1-19]

Thus ended in complete failure the efforts of England to reap what she
considered the legitimate fruits of this great enterprise. The day of
which her farseeing publicists had dreamed had arrived; she had at last
challenged the right of Spain to all North America, her sons were
actually settled on the banks of the James, a beginning had been made in
the work of building a colonial empire. But the hope which had so fired
the mind of Hakluyt, the hope of attaining through Virginia British
economic independence, was destined never to be fulfilled. However
lavishly nature had endowed the colony with natural resources, however
dense her forests, however rich her mines, however wide and deep her
waterways, she could not become an industrial community. Fate had
decreed for her another destiny. But England was reluctant to accept the
inevitable in this matter. Long years after Sir Edwin Sandys and his
fellow workers of the London Company had passed to their rest, we find
the royal ministers urging upon the colony the necessity of producing
pig iron and silk and potash, and promising every possible encouragement
in the work. But the causes which operated to bring failure in 1610 or
1620 prevented success in 1660 and 1680. Virginia had not the abundant
supply of labor essential to the development of an industrial community
and for many decades, perhaps for centuries, could not hope to attain
it. Her future lay in the discovery and exploitation of one staple
commodity for which she was so preeminently adapted that she could, even
with her costly labor, meet the competition of other lands. The future
history of Virginia was to be built up around the Indian plant tobacco.

_CHAPTER II_

THE INDIA