Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/37

 of Englishmen as to the advantages to result from the colonization of Virginia were substantially the same, however widely separated the periods in which the witnesses quoted lived. It will be interesting to examine in detail the most important of the reasons offered. The foremost in their influence upon the minds of the greater number of shareholders of the London Company when the enterprise was inaugurated were the probable presence of gold there and the supposed nearness of the country to the South Sea. So powerful in that age was the working of these two expectations in the breasts of Englishmen, that Ralph Lane, after describing in the most glowing language the fertility of the soil, the rareness, variety, and profusion of the products, and the wholesomeness of the climate, of the modern Carolina coast, admitted with evident reluctance, &#8220;that the discovery of a good mine by the goodness of God, or a passage to the South Sea, or some way to it, and nothing else, can bring this country in request to be inhabited by our nation.&#8221; Clearly foreseeing the consequences of such a far-reaching discovery, Lane listened with credulous eagerness to the Indian reports of a mine near the upper waters of the Moratoc, and of a salt sea at its fountain-head.

The importance of the mine in association with colonization had been shown in the most striking manner only a few years before in the instance of Sir Humphrey Gilbert; from the first hour of his occupation of Newfoundland in 1583 it is said that he was deeply interested in the search for metals, commanding the mineral men and the refiners especially to be diligent. As soon as he supposed he had found silver ore, he declared that if he were to follow his private humor, he would remain in Newfoundland, but his promises to his friends and the