the Falls of the Far West, at a spot we now call Dutch Gap. Here Dale laid
out a town which he named Henricus after the Prince of Wales, and for its
citizens he drafted from Jamestown three hundred persons. To him also are
due Bermuda and Shirley Hundreds and Dale's Gift over on the Eastern Shore.
As the Company sent over more colonists, there began to show, up and down
the James though at far intervals, cabins and clearings made by white men,
set about with a stockade, and at the river edge a rude landing and a
fastened boat. The restless search for mines of gold and silver now
slackened. Instead eyes turned for wealth to the kingdom of the plant and
tree, and to fur trade and fisheries.

* Hitherto there had been no trading or landholding by individuals. All the
colonists contributed the products of their toil to the common store and
received their supplies from the Company. The adventurers (stockholders)
contributed money to the enterprise; the colonists, themselves and their
labor.


Those ships that brought colonists were in every instance expected to
return to England laden with the commodities of Virginia. At first cargoes
of precious ores were looked for. These failing, the Company must take from
Virginia what lay at hand and what might be suited to English needs. In
1610 the Company issued a paper of instructions upon this subject of
Virginia commodities. The daughter was expected to send to the mother
country sassafras root, bay berries, puccoon, sarsaparilla, walnut,
chestnut, and chinquapin oil, wine, silk grass, beaver cod, beaver and
otter skins, clapboard of oak and walnut, tar, pitch, turpentine, and
powdered sturgeon.

It might seem that Virginia was headed to become a land of fishers, of