Warm Up #2
PROFIT -- not the desire to create a stable colony in the New World -- was the driving force behind the voyage to Virginia.
The English wanted an alternative route to the East Indies so they could stop buying silk, spices and other luxury items from Spain and Portugal. They looked west to travel east. Their geographically preposterous goal? To establish a trading post that would allow voyagers to explore a northwest passage to the East Indies.
The ultimate charge for Virginia Company of London wayfarers was to find raw materials that could be sent back to England and sold.
That proved a lot harder than expected.
"There was a lot of trial and error during that time, and that was the problem with that first era," said Nancy Egloff, a historian at Jamestown Settlement. "They just kind of floundered around trying to figure out what would make money for the investors. They weren't super-organized, and they were just trying to find their way."
One of the first setbacks was a case of shattered expectations. The settlers thought they would find gold and silver, as the Spanish had during their exploration of Mexico and Central America in the 1500s, but that discovery never came. They did find a "shiny rock," which was never positively identified, during expeditions along the Chesapeake Bay, but it turned out to be worthless.
Iron pyrite, or "fool's gold," may have been present in small bits in the sand on river shores, and along with biotite mica, could have easily been confused for gold, said Lisa L. Heuvel, author of the soon-to-be-released "Early Attempts at English Mineral Exploration in North America: The Jamestown Colony." "Exposed or weathered biotite mica also has a golden sheen... " but "given frontier conditions in Virginia, accurate testing of such water-suspended particles was unlikely."
From the day they arrived, the Englishmen scarcely had time for profit-bearing ventures. They were too busy trying to survive.
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