Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/578

 CHAPTER XXI

CONCLUSION

casting a brief retrospective glance over the period of time to which this inquiry has been confined, it is seen that by far the most momentous fact in the history of Virginia in the seventeenth century was the discovery, through Rolfe&#8217;s experiment in 1612, that the soil of the Colony was adapted to the production of a quality of tobacco which was destined to prove valuable in the European markets. From the very beginning, this discovery thwarted one of the principal objects of the colonization of the new country; it deprived the people of England of all hope of obtaining from the Colony the commodities which they were importing from the Continent at an enormous outlay. Its most vital influence, however, bore directly upon the fate of the people of Virginia themselves. It shaped that fate absolutely. The manner in which this result was effected is soon described. Tobacco had not long been cultivated in the Colony before the virgin land was discovered to be necessary to its production in perfection, since there were no artificial manures in that age for retaining or restoring the fertility of the ground. As soon as the soil gave signs of exhaustion, it was allowed to relapse into coarse grasses and finally into forest; a new field was created by the removal of trees over an area selected in the prim&aelig;val woods, which covered the greater part of every plantation, and this field was in turn abandoned when it became