Now clapboards and sassafras, pitch, tar, and pine trees for masts, were making no fortune for Virginia shippers.

How could they, these few folk far off in America, compete in products of the forest with northern Europe?
As to mines of gold and silver, that first rich vision had proved a disheartening mirage.

"They have great hopes that the mountains are very rich, from the discovery of a silver mine made nineteen years ago, at a place about four days' journey from the falls of James river; but they have not the means of transporting the ore." So, dissatisfied with some means of livelihood and disappointed in others, the Virginians turned to tobacco.
Every year each planter grew more tobacco; every year more ships were laden.

In 1628 more than five hundred thousand pounds were sent to England, for to England it must go, and not elsewhere.

There it must struggle with the best Spanish, for a long time valued above the best Virginian.