Now he had courageously despatched a very blunt note to his employers, the merchant adventurers of the company in London, telling them the truth about their El Dorado. It was a note that must have startled those comfortable gentlemen right out of their starched ruffs. Certainly it was disillusioning to gold-hungry investors already so heavily committed. But by its very forthrightness it was also soberingly effective, for the merchants promptly took John Smith’s advice, even though they didn’t thank him for his seeming impertinence. There might be iron in Virginia, Smith had written in effect, but there was no gold, and neither was there any immediate prospect of the discovery there of a short route to Cathay and India. However, a profitable plantation could be cultivated by earnest husbandry and the realistic development of the country’s natural resources for trade. Agricultural products, furs, timber, naval stores, iron and possibly other products of local industries could eventually be shipped home in exchange for English woolens and coarse cloths. In the meantime of course the president had his hands full just foraging for food enough to keep his charges alive. While people were dying of famine, company profits of any kind had to wait--even those to be gained from organized fur trading for which there was considerable pressure from the natives. The red men were always much more interested in trading their furs than their food. They never raised more of the latter than was needed for their own minimum requirements. Smith had to resort to stratagem and even to a kind of military commerce on more than one occasion to separate them from their corn. So the Indians, with their pelts to barter, turned to the sailors who manned the transport ships, and the mariners readily accommodated them. These hands knew how to turn a quick profit in the golden fleece. They learned first, when the fishing fleets began crossing the oceans, to Newfoundland and elsewhere--and later, when English ships took to the seas to trade with other nations. As far back as 1560 merchants in England were complaining to their factors in Russia about the sailors’ aptitude for smuggling furs. “Foxe skins, white, blacke, and russet will be vendible here,” they wrote. “The last yere you sent none; but there were mariners that bought many. If any mariners doe buy any trifling furres or other commodities, we will they shall be registered in our pursers bookes, to the intent we may know what they be.”