Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/455

 but none adapted to his purpose was found there. He was successful in obtaining the kind which he required from the banks at Cape Henry, but its quality proved so unsatisfactory that Sandys wrote to Ferrer in England requesting him to forward two or three hogsheads of the proper material. The difficulty did not lie only in securing the sand. The Italian workmen employed in the glass-house were wholly intractable; Sandys, in the violence of his anger and disgust, went so far as to say &#8220;that a more damned crew hell never vomited,&#8221; a character which their actions justified his attributing to them. The Italians were anxious to return to Europe, and in order to effect their release, not only proceeded so slowly in their work as to accomplish nothing of consequence, but cracked the furnace by striking it with a crowbar. Their studied efforts to obtain permission to leave the country by breaking up the industry in which they were engaged ended in failure, for among those who were enumerated in the census of 1624-25 as residing on the Treasurer&#8217;s lands, were Bernardo and Vicenso, two of the four Italians who had come out with Norton in 1621.

There is no positive evidence to show for how great a length of time the glass-house remained in existence