ver and otter skins, clapboard of oak and walnut, tar,
pitch, turpentine, and powdered sturgeon.

It might seem that Virginia was headed to become a land of fishers, of
foresters, and vine dressers, perhaps even, when the gold should be
at last discovered, of miners. At home, the colonizing merchants and
statesmen looked for some such thing. In return for what she laded into
ships, Virginia was to receive English-made goods, and to an especial
degree woolen goods, "a very liberall utterance of our English cloths
into a maine country described to be bigger than all Europe." There was
to be direct trade, country kind for country kind, and no specie to be
taken out of England. The promoters at home doubtless conceived a hardy
and simple trans-Atlantic folk of their own kindred, planters for their
own needs, steady consumers of the plainer sort of English wares, steady
gatherers, in return, of necessaries for which England otherwise must
trade after a costly fashion with lands which were not always friendly.
A simple, sturdy, laborious Virginia, white men and Indians. If this was
their dream, reality was soon to modify it.

A new commodity of unsuspected commercial value began now to be grown in
garden-plots along the James--the "weed" par excellence, tobacco. That
John Rolfe who had been shipwrecked on the Sea Adventure was now a
planter in Virginia. His child Bermuda had died in infancy, and his wife
soon after their coming to Jamestown. Rolfe remained, a young man, a
good citizen, and a Christian. And he loved tobacco. On that trivial
fact hinges an important chapter in the economic history of America.
In 1612 Rolfe planted tobacco in his own garden, experimented with its
culture, and prophesied that the Virginian weed would rank with the
best Spanish. It was now a shorter plant, smaller-leafed and
smaller-flowered, but time and skilful gardening would improve it.

England had known tobacco for thirty years, owing its introduction to
Raleigh. At first merely amused by the New World rarity, England was
now by general use turning a luxury into a necessity. More and more she
received through Dutch and Spanish ships tobacco from the Indies. Among
the English adventurers to Virginia some already knew the uses of the
weed; others soon learned from the Indians. Tobacco was perhaps not
indigenous to Virginia, but had probably come through southern tribes
who in turn had gained it from those who knew it in its tropic habitat.