Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/67

 hoped, on the strength of the Indian reports, to find it. The Atlantic and Pacific now lie only a journey of six days apart; the expedition which set out in the fall of 1698 to explore the Monacan country was hardly expected even by its most sanguine members to accomplish its object in a briefer period. The reasons making it so desirable for the English people to secure a highway to the east by way of the west have passed away. In the Canadian Pacific Railway they possess every facility for transporting merchandise across the continent for transhipment to the East, but at the present time, not only is there no bar to navigation around the Cape of Good Hope by the vessels of all nations, but the Suez Canal has shortened very much the length of the route to the modern South Sea. The passage to that sea by the North Cape has been traversed in recent years by Nordenskiold, while in 1852 McClure made his way from Behring Straits through Melville Sound into Baffin Bay, thus accomplishing what for over two centuries had thwarted the determined efforts of the bravest and most skilful seamen. The success of these two navigators was the triumph of an historic sentiment which had long come to have little practical meaning.

The third important motive, in which the colonization of Virginia had its origin, was the expectation that the new country would supply a large number of articles which the English people at that time were compelled to buy from foreign nations. The Muscovy Company had always derived the greatest part of its profits from the transportation to England of tar, pitch, rosin, flax, cordage, masts, yards, timber, and other naval stores, and also glass and soap ashes. These were the products of Russia and Poland, a, large portion of the surface of these countries being covered with magnificent forests. The