Читать книгу The Beginners of a Nation - Eggleston Edward - Страница 32

Wine. It was also proposed to produce wine in Virginia for English consumption. No more gold and silver should go out of the realm to buy port and canary to the profit of foreigners and the impoverishment of the good and loyal subjects of his Majesty. The instructions on this point were clear, and before the Virginia exiles had secured bread to stay their hunger they had made wine of the sour wild grapes of the country. French vine-dressers were sent over a little later and were forbidden to plant tobacco, but were compelled to employ themselves about vines, with the care of silkworms for variety. MS. Rec. Va. Co. i, 343. In 1621 these Frenchmen sent to England a cask of wine, the arrival of which was duly celebrated. Other experimental casks of wine were afterward sent to England from America at long intervals, but without decreasing the profits of wine growers in the Old World.

All the commodities sought from Virginia were unsuited to conditions in a new country. Other products sought. To the folly of making such experiments at all where living itself was an experiment, the managers added the folly of crowding a multiplicity of problematic enterprises on the colony at the same time. With a virgin continent in which to produce novelties, all things seemed possible in an age so hopeful. Plants of every clime grew rank in the imagination of projectors. Virginia was a wonderland, and it was readily believed without evidence that the "soyle and clymate" were "very apt and fit for sugar canes"; "also linseed and rapeseeds to make oiles," as a black-letter pamphlet of 1609 expresses it. Nova Brittania. Along with "orenges, limons, and almonds," this official writer proposes to plant "anniseeds, rice, cummin, cottonwool, carroway seeds, ginger, madder, olives, oris, sumacke," and, as if this breathless list were not enough for one new land, he adds, "and many such like that I can not now name." If we may trust the publications of the company, various West India plants were tried in the very first days of the colony, while the threefold peril of death from famine, pestilence, and savage war was imminent.

Timber and naval stores. But it was not enough to wring from an infant colony the products of the south; those derived from the north of Europe were straightway to be got there also. MS. Rec. Va. Co. 31 May and 23 June, 1620. German millwrights – "Dutch carpenters," in the phrase of the records – were brought from Hamburg by John Ferrar to build Virginia sawmills; timber was still sawed by hand in England. Pitch, tar, and potash were to be produced by Poles sent out for the purpose in the second year of the colony. Patriotism dictated that England should be relieved of her dependence on foreign countries for naval stores. Virginia had forests: why should she not produce these things? 28

It had been found that the savages eagerly received glass beads in exchange for corn and peltries. Glass-making. Nothing more was required to prove the profitableness of glass-making. Some Germans were sent to the colony in 1608, and glass works were established. 29 For some reason no proper materials were available at first, and it became necessary to request that sand might be sent from England to make Virginia glass of at the glass works in the woods near Jamestown. The German glass blowers were prone to run away to the Indians, among whom work was lighter and food more abundant. The tribesmen encouraged these desertions by providing dusky wives for the men whose skill with tools and weapons they valued highly. In 1621 the glass business was revived, and this time it was intrusted to Italian workmen. Iron works. About the same time iron works were established at Falling Creek, with "forty skilled workmen from Sussex to carry them forward." 30 Twenty-five ship carpenters were sent to ply their trade on the James River, and it was also arranged that oil was to be distilled from walnuts by the "apothecaries." George Sandys was sent over in July, 1621, to have entire control of all schemes for staple commodities. There was a certain fitness in intrusting these creatures of the imagination to a poet. Pineapples, plantains, and other fruits were to be started forthwith. There was once again great hope from the "rich commodity of silk," an endowed school for Indians was founded, and the little Virginia pool became iridescent with many frail bubbles. Result of the massacre. The sudden and frightful massacre by the savages in March, 1622, obliterated instantly all vain and premature projects. This calamity did not cause the failure of these foredoomed schemes; it only saved them from a painful and lingering death, and provided their friends with a decent epitaph for them. The people who survived the massacre were decimated by an epidemic in the following year. What strength they could spare from frequent battles with the savages they spent in growing corn and tobacco, which last, of all the things tried, proved to be the only commodity profitable for export.