board.

In spite, however, of the disappointing results of Gilbert's attempt
to found a colony in Newfoundland, the importance of the cod fishery
and the ivory tusks and oil of the walruses drew ever more and more
ships from Bristol and Devonshire to the coasts of that great island
and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. In 1592 the English
adventurers got as far west as Anticosti Island (in a ship from
Bristol), and in 1597 there is the first record of English ships (from
London--the _Hopewell_ and the _Chancewell_) sailing up the St.
Lawrence River, perhaps as far west as Quebec.

In 1602, stimulated by Sir Walter Raleigh,[4] Bartholomew Gosnold
sailed direct to the coast of North America south of the Newfoundland
latitudes, and anchored his bark off the coast of Massachusetts on the
26th of March, 1602. Failing to find a good harbour here, he stood out
for the south and definitely discovered and named Cape Cod, not far
from the modern city of Boston. From Cape Cod he made his way to the
Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay, and here he built a storehouse and
fort, and may be said to have laid the foundations of the future
colony of New England. He brought back with him a cargo of sassafras
root, which was then much esteemed as a valuable medicine and a remedy
for almost all diseases.

[Footnote 4: In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh, the half-brother of Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, financed an expedition to sail to the coast of North
America in a more southerly direction. In this way was founded the
(afterwards abandoned) colony of Roanoke, in North Carolina. It was to
this region that Queen Elizabeth applied the title of Virginia, which
some years afterwards was transferred to the first English colony on
the James River.]

Subsequent expeditions of English ships explored and mapped the coast
of Maine, and took on board Amerindians for exhibition in England.
Their adventures, together with those of the colonists farther south,
led to the creation of chartered companies, and to the great British
colonies of New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and
Georgia, which were to become in time the United States of America--a
vast field of adventure which we cannot follow farther in this book.

As regards Newfoundland, James I, in 1610, granted a patent to a
Bristol merchant for the foundation there of a colony, and although
this attempt, and another under Sir George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in
1616, came almost to nothing thro