In the document, John Smith discussed how men who could go to America had the wealth and the means to do so. They could easily buy supplies to help support their travels. In contrast, those who didn't have the money had to work to support their voyage to America; many paying as much as fifteen times the amount for supplies. In the document, Smith referred to the settlers as "Gold Miners" looking for wealth. .
As more permanent colonies were beginning to be established, such as Jamestown, Chesapeake colonists soon discovered the plant called tobacco. The land in the Chesapeake colonies was very arable and the climate was very warm which made it easy to plant crops like tobacco and sugar cane. The tobacco crop was first planted in 1611 and nine years later Virginians exported 40,000 pounds of the cured leaves. By the late 1620's, shipments had jumped dramatically to 1.5 million pounds. Through tobacco, both settlers and the Virginia Company found the salable commodity for which they had been searching for. .
Tobacco attracted many settlers, and since tobacco cultivation required abundant land because the crop drained soil of nutrients, the once small English settlements began to expand rapidly. However, colonists in the south began to expand away from each other, establishing isolated farms as opposed to towns. Because of the vast distance between each of the farms in the Chesapeake colonies, the colonies were unable to protect themselves. As stated in "document G", the southern colonies were unable to protect themselves because of the limited amounts of men that had settled in those lands. Moreover, the document stated how men were very apprehensive about leaving their families to go protect the borders of the colonies, because they were leaving their families very vulnerable. This caused the colonists in the south to have constantly lived vigilantly as they were fearful of being attacked continuously.