In 1591 White returned to Roanoke, to find it again deserted, with no traces of his daughter or of the other colonists. They had probably been overcome by the Indians, and those whose lives were spared adopted into the neighboring tribes. In spite of the many costly attempts, the sixteenth century closed with no English settlement on the shores of America.
Causes of English failures thus far.
Among the principal causes of this early failure in Virginia were the improper character and spirit of the emigrants, who, instead of looking to the soil as the chief source of supplies, expected to find rich mines, or tribes possessing gold, and relied upon England for the necessaries of life; they had not enough occupation to keep them from brooding over their isolation, and by their harshness they turned the Indians into harassing enemies.
Gosnold's voyages.
Bartholomew Gosnold has had the reputation of being the first mariner who set out for America on a direct voyage from England, thus avoiding the West Indies and the Spanish, and saving nearly a thousand miles; but others before him had taken the direct course,—notably Verrazano (1524). |Pring in Maine, and Weymouth at Cape Cod.| In 1602, while trading with the Indians, Gosnold explored the coast from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, to the Elizabeth Islands, on his way landing upon and naming Cape Cod. The following year Martin Pring discovered many harbors and rivers in Maine. In 1605 George Weymouth, sent by the Earl of Southampton and Lord Arundel, explored from Cape Cod northward. He carried back with him several kidnapped natives, three of whom he gave to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of the English port of Plymouth. |Gorges becomes interested.| Gorges was particularly struck with the reported abundance of good harbors in the north, compared with the scarcity of such in Virginia and Carolina, and became at once strongly interested in New England exploration.
Public attention in England had by this time become strongly attracted to the northern region as probably the most desirable for future experiments in colonization; it was pointed out with much force that the lack of good anchorage was one of the reasons why the southern attempts had failed. Conditions in England, too, had at last so changed as to make it possible to undertake colonization with better assurances of success. But New England was not destined to be the site of the first permanent plantation. That honor was reserved for what is now Virginia.
16. The Experience of the Sixteenth Century (1492-1606).
Sixteenth century notable for interest in discovery and settlement.
In reviewing the period from 1492 to 1606,—practically the sixteenth century,—we see that it was notable for the extraordinary interest displayed in discovery and settlement. Attention has been called to the part played by the general desire of Europeans to secure the trade of India. But we must not forget as well that, as a feature of the great Renaissance and Reformation movement, the spirit of investigation was abroad, in religion, philosophy, and the arts; there had grown up great commercial and trading cities, in which the successful foreign merchant became a part of a powerful aristocracy; popular imagination had been fired by traders' stories of India, China, and Japan; there was an eagerness to reach out into the regions of mystery, to enlarge the horizon of human knowledge. The effect was greatly to increase skill in navigation, to build up a merchant marine, and—it being an age of universal freebooting—to cultivate an experience in naval warfare which was a preparation for the great sea-fights of the eighteenth century.
Of the three nations which, in the sixteenth century, attempted to colonize America north of the Gulf of Mexico, all had practically failed. Spain had with comparative ease conquered the unwarlike natives of Mexico and Peru upon their cultivated plains. |Causes of failure in North American colonization.| That very ease took away the disposition, even had her people been capable of the effort, slowly and painfully to subdue the tangled forests and savage warriors of Florida, with no other promise of reward than the possession of unredeemed soil. Not suited to the task, she utterly wasted alike the resources of the home government applicable to colonization, and those of the established colonies. France had failed because of dissensions at home, inferior powers of organization, the want of the proper colonizing temper, and the severity of the climate in that portion of the New World which she had seized upon as the seat of her colonies. English colonization thus far had been unproductive because there was a want of understanding of the difficulties, because of the selection of colonists who lacked experience in agriculture, because poor harbors were generally chosen, because there was difficulty in keeping up communications with the mother-land, because the resident leaders lacked courage and had not the staying qualities which were in after years the salvation of the Plymouth Pilgrims. But the effect of these early English efforts was important in giving the people needed training in navigation and colonization, and a knowledge of the country.