The industrial and manufacturing efforts of these years, however, were not destined to succeed. This condition was not due to any laxity on the part of George Sandys, resident treasurer in Virginia, who was something of an economic on-the-spot supervisor for the company. Virginia could not yet support these projects profitably, and interest was lacking on the part of the planters who found in tobacco a source of wealth superior to anything else that had been tried. Tobacco was profitable, and it was grown, at times, even in the streets of Jamestown. It was the profit from tobacco that supported the improved living conditions that came throughout the colony. These Englishmen who came to settle in the wilderness retained their desire for the advantages of life in England. Books, for example, were highly valued, and with the passage of the years were no uncommon commodity in Virginia. As early as 1608, Rev. Robert Hunt had a library at Jamestown, which was consumed by fire in January of that year. Each new group of colonists seemingly added to the store on hand—Bibles, Books of Common Prayer, other religious works, medical and scientific treatises, legal publications, accounts of gardening, and such. In 1621, the company wrote to the colonial officials regarding works for a new minister being sent to the colony that: “As for bookes we doubt not but you wilbe able to supplie him out of the lybraries of so many that have died.” By this date there was local literary effort, too, such as that by Treasurer George Sandys who continued his celebrated translation of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ in the house of William Pierce at Jamestown. Then, too, in March 1623, a gentleman of the colony sent from “_Iames_ his Towne” the ballad “Good Newes from Virginia” in which, among other things, he describes the arrival of the governor’s wife at Jamestown and uses this to prod others to support the colony and to settle in Virginia. _But last of all that Lady faire, that woman worth renoune: That left her Country and her friends, to grace braue_ Iames _his towne_. _The wife unto our Gouernour, did safely here ariue: With many gallants following her, whom God preserue aliue. What man would stay when Ladies gay, both liues and fortunes leaues: To taste what we haue truely sowne, truth never man deceaues._ (From _The William and Mary Quarterly_, 3rd Ser., V, 357-8) “NEW TOWNE.”