While there was much depression among the shipowners, they did not overlook the advantages to be derived from intercourse with the newly-discovered world of North America. Though the expeditions promoted by Raleigh and his associates had been unfortunate, profitable ventures were soon after made, beads, trinkets, and articles of little value being exchanged for skins and furs obtained by the Indians; and Captain Gosnold made in 1602 the first _direct_ voyage across the Atlantic to America—all other English sailors at least having sailed by way of the Canaries and West Indies. “Steering in a small bark, directly across the Atlantic, in seven weeks he reached Cape Elizabeth on the coast of Maine. Following the coast to the south-west, he skirted ‘an outpoint of wooded land;’ and about noon of the 14th of May he anchored ‘near Savage Rock,’ to the east of York Harbour.... Not finding his ‘purposed place’ he stood to the south, and on the morning of the 15th discovered the promontory which he named Cape Cod. He and four of his men went on shore. Cape Cod was the first spot in New England ever trod by Englishman.” He traded with the natives in peltries, sassafras, and cedar-wood, and was probably the first to sow English corn on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard. In 1606 two maritime companies, the “Plymouth Adventurers,” and the South Virginia Company, were authorised to colonise and form plantations; the first having right to the territory which now embraces Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York; and the second, to that which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. A single steamer of these days has often landed more emigrants at New York than did a dozen of these early expeditions at other points, for their progress at first was painfully slow.