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. Sidenotes: Gosnold's voyages. Pring in Maine, and Weymouth at Cape Cod. Gorges becomes interested. 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). 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 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). Sidenote: Sixteenth century notable for interest in discovery and settlement.