href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@32507@[email protected]#Footnote_1-14_14" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[1-14] Immediately plans were launched for taking advantage of what seemed to be a splendid opportunity. In the course of the first three years machinery for smelting and manufacturing iron was sent over and men were set to work to operate it. But the difficulties proved too great and ere long the attempt had to be abandoned.

The Company had no idea of relinquishing permanently its quest for staple commodities, however, and soon a new and far more ambitious project was set on foot for extracting the ore. The spot selected was at Falling Creek, in the present county of Chesterfield, a few miles below the rapids of the James river. George Sandys had noted with satisfaction some years before that the place was in every respect suited for iron smelting, for in close proximity to the ore was wood in abundance, stones for the construction of the furnace and deep water for transportation. To him it seemed that nature itself had selected the site and endowed it with every facility which the enterprise could require.[1-15] Here the London Company spent from £4,000 to £5,000 in a supreme effort to make their colony answer in some degree the expectations which had been placed in it. A Captain Blewit, with no less than 80 men, was sent over to construct the works, upon which, they declared, were fixed the eyes of "God, Angels and men." But Blewit soon succumbed to one of the deadly epidemics which yearly swept over the little colony, and a Mr. John Berkeley, accompanied by 20 experienced workers, came over to take his place.

At first things seem to have gone well with this ambitious venture. Soon the Virginia forests were resounding to the whir of the axe and the crash of falling trees, to the exclamations of scores of busy men as they extracted the ore, built their furnace and began the work of smelting. Operations had progressed so far that it was confidently predicted that soon large quantities of pig iron would be leaving the James for England, when an unexpected disaster put an abrupt end to the enterprise. In the terrible massacre of 1622, when the implacable Opechancanough attempted at one stroke to rid the country of its white invaders, the little industrial settlement at Falling Creek was completely destroyed. The furnace was ruined, the machinery thrown into the river, the workmen butchered. This project, which had absorbed so much of the attention and resources of the Company, is said to have yielded only a shovel, a pair of tongs and one bar of iron.[1-16]

The history of the attempts to establish glass works in Virginia is also a story of wasted energy and money, of final failure. The Dutch and Polish 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 preëminently 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 Indian Weed

History is baffling in its complexity. The human mind instinctively strives for simplicity, endeavors to reproduce all things to set rules, to discover the basic principles upon which all action is based. And in various lines of research much success has attended these efforts. We know the laws underlying the movements of the planets, of various chemical reactions, of plant and animal life. It is inevitable, then, that attempts should be made to accomplish similar results in history, to master the vast multitude of facts which crowd its pages, many of them seemingly unrelated, and show that after all they obey certain fundamental laws. Despite the vaunted freedom of the human will, it is maintained, mankind like the planets or the chemical agents, cannot escape the operation of definite forces to which it is subjected. And if these forces are studied and understood, to some extent at least, the course of future events may be predicted.

Thus it may be accepted as practically established that in any country and with any people a condition of continued disorder and anarchy must be succeeded by one of despotism. History records, we believe, no exception to this rule, while there are many instances which tend to confirm it. The absolute rule of the Caesars followed the anarchy of the later Roman republic, the Oliverian Protectorate succeeded the British civil wars, the first French Empire the Reign of Terror, the Bolshevik despotism the collapse of the old regime in Russia. Such will always be the case, we are told, because mankind turns