Bartholomew Gosnold was a West-of-England mariner who had served in the expeditions of Sir Walter Raleigh to the Virginia coast. Under his command, in the spring of 1602, "with the consent of Sir Walter Raleigh, and at the cost, among others, of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, the accomplished patron of Shakespeare, a small vessel, called the Concord, was equipped for exploration in 'the north part of Virginia,' with a view to the establishment of a colony. At this time, in the last year of the Tudor dynasty, and nineteen years after the fatal termination of Gilbert's enterprise, there was no European Inhabitant of North America, except those of Spanish birth in Florida, and some twenty or thirty French, the miserable relics of two frustrated attempts to settle what they called New France. Gosnold sailed from Falmouth with a company of thirty-two persons, of whom eight were seamen, and twenty were to become planters. Taking a straight course across the Atlantic, instead of the indirect course by the Canaries and the West Indies which had been hitherto pursued in voyages to Virginia, at the end of seven weeks he saw land in Massachusetts Bay, probably near what is now Salem Harbor. Here a boat came off, of Basque build, manned by eight natives, of whom two or three were dressed in European clothes, indicating the presence of earlier foreign voyagers in these waters. Next he stood to the southward, and his crew took great quantities of codfish by a head land, called by him for that reason Cape Cod, the name which it retains. Gosnold, Brereton, and three others, went on shore, the first Englishmen who are known to have set foot upon the soil of Massachusetts. ... Sounding his way cautiously along, first in a southerly, and then in a westerly direction, and probably passing to the south of Nantucket, Gosnold next landed on a small island, now called No Man's Land. {72} To this he gave the name of Martha's Vineyard, since transferred to the larger island further north. ... South of Buzzard's Bay, and separated on the south by the Vineyard Sound from Martha's Vineyard, is scattered the group denoted on modern maps as the Elizabeth Islands. The southwesternmost of these, now known by the Indian name of Cuttyhunk, was denominated by Gosnold Elizabeth Island. ... Here Gosnold found a pond two miles in circumference, separated from the sea on one side by a beach thirty yards wide, and enclosing 'a rocky islet, containing near an acre of ground, full of wood and rubbish.' This islet was fixed upon for a settlement. In three weeks, while a part of the company were absent on a trading expedition to the mainland, the rest dug and stoned a cellar, prepared timber and built a house, which they fortified with palisades, and thatched with sedge. Proceeding to make an