Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/32

 and Europe. From Amsterdam he imported pottery, glassware and tavern supplies. He also imported wines from France and Spain and much of this commodity he sent to Virginia in exchange for tobacco.

Herrman’s scheme for commercial supremacy was far-reaching. He dealt in African slaves and sent numbers of them to Maryland and Virginia in exchange for tobacco. Slavery was found not to be a suitable institution in New Netherland, where few slaves were kept. The Dutch burgers were content to cultivate their own small plots of land without extra help. Moreover, the climate did not seem to agree with the health of the slaves as we find that some of whom Herrman had brought in died suddenly.

But the phase of Herrman’s mercantile career with which we are now concerned is the trade in tobacco between New and old Amsterdam. Tobacco had been grown on a small scale by the Indians and by the Virginians from the earliest years of that colony. It was, however, for the most part cultivated for only local use; for but little found its way to the old world except that which was occasionally taken by a returning emigrant. But the Virginians, learning how readily the use of the weed was becoming among the people of not only England and Holland but in all European countries, began the cultivation of tobacco on a somewhat larger scale. In 1619 the first slaves were brought to America through the port of Jamestown in Dutch ships; thereby laying the groundwork for the extensive cultivation of tobacco decade or two hence. Up until 1625 the greater part of the Virginia tobacco had been