also to furnish that commodity at a cheap rate, owing to the abundance of wood that could be used as fuel in the manufacture.[1] These anticipations were justified by the numerous indications of the presence of iron ore observed by the earliest settlers. Smith, whose mind was always directed to the practical and sober aspects of his surroundings, was among the first to call attention to the adaptability of the new country to iron manufacture as one of the most promising of its sources of wealth, and in order to show the substantial ground on which his expectations were based, he forwarded to England during his presidency two barrels of stones rich in tracings of iron ore.[2] In 1609, Captain Newport transported a large quantity of the same kind of ore to the mother country on his return in the course of that year. So excellent was the metal extracted from it, amounting to sixteen or seventeen tons, that it was purchased by the East India Company, according to whose statement it proved more satisfactory than any iron, procured from other countries; which they had as yet used.[3] The metal was sold to that Corporation at the rate of four pounds sterling a ton.
The earliest attempt to manufacture iron in Virginia, if reliance can be placed on the testimony of Don Maguel, a Spanish witness, was made previous to 1610. Already in the course of the first three years following the foundation of the settlement at Jamestown, machinery had been erected by the English settlers to work the iron mines.[4]
- ↑ It was stated in the Instructions to Governor Wyatt, 1621, that the iron works then in the course of erection were “the greatest hope and expectation of the Colony.” Hening’s Statutes, vol. I, p. 116.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 444.
- ↑ Strachey’s Historie of Travaile in Virginia, p. 132.
- ↑ Report of Francis Maguel, 1610, Spanish Archives, Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 398. The existence of iron ore near the Falls was, it is to be inferred from a passage in Strachey, known to Dale:
