ssembly in 1626 ruled:

It is ordered, according to the act of the late General Assembly,
that no man go or send abroad either upon fowling, fishing, or
otherwise whatsoever without a sufficient plenty of men, well armed
and provided of munition, upon penalty of undergoing severe censure
of punishment by the Governor and Council.

It was characteristic of Virginia's fisheries that the pessimists
occupied the stage for a while, then the optimists. An example of the
whipping-up of enthusiasm is this discourse of Edward Williams writing
on Virginia at mid-century. China was a fabulous country, therefore he
compared Virginia with it. Ideas ran riot as he contemplated the
resources crying to be developed:

... What multitudes of fish to satisfy the most voluptuous of
wishes, can China glory in which Virginia may not in justice boast
of?... Let her publish a precedent so worthy of admiration (and
which will not admit belief in those bosoms where the eye cannot be
witness of the action) of five thousand fish taken at one draught
near Cape Charles, at the entry into Chesapeake bay, and which
swells the wonder greater, not one fish under the measure of two
feet in length. What fleets come yearly upon the coasts of
Newfoundland and New England for fish, with an incredible return?
Yet it is a most assured truth that if they would make experiment
upon the south of Cape Cod, and from thence to the coast of this
happy country, they would find fish of greater delicacy, and as
full handed plenty, which though foreigners know not, yet if our
own planters would make use of it, would yield them a revenue which
cannot admit of any diminution while there are ebbs and floods,
rivers feed and receive the ocean, or nature fails in (the
elemental original of all things) waters.

There wants nothing but industrious spirits and encouragement to
make a rich staple of this commodity; and would the Virginians but
make salt pits, in which they have a greater convenience of tides
(that part of the universe by reason of a full influence of the
moon upon the almost limitless Atlantic causing the most spacious
fluxes and refluxes, that any shore of the other divisions in the
world is sensible of) to leave their pits full of salt-water, and
more friendly and warm sunbeams to concoct it into salt, than
Rochel, or any parts of Euro