lates, and the houses were supported by pillars of gold, silver, and crystal. Ingram's adventures included finding gold nuggets as large as his fist in springs and brooks and being chased by creatures as big as a horse with tusks. Seldom had a single traveler done more to misinform one continent about the makeup of another.
If Ingram had done little to further truth about the New World, at least he sparked new interest. John Walker, who apparently landed near present day Camden on his 1580 voyage, climbed a nearby hill and described the surrounding land as "most excellent for soil, diversity of sweet wood and other trees." Walker visited an Indian lodge and stole some of four hundred hides that were stored there. Only once did he let his imagination get the better of him. Spying some mica sparkling in the rocks, he promptly decided he had located a silver deposit.
Humphrey Gilbert was sufficiently impressed by the accounts of Ferdinando and Walker to attempt a colony in the region in 1583. After sailing to Newfoundland, which he officially claimed for the Queen, he continued west, only to meet with disaster. The supply ship, the Delight, went aground off Nova Scotia and was beat to pieces, with the loss of all provisions for the projected colony and most of the crew. Gilbert was forced to turn back but never reached England; the Squirrel, a small pinnace in which he was sailing, foundered in heavy seas. Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, carried on the effort by commissioning yet another exploration, but reports from the voyage convinced him to shift his efforts farther south; soon thereafter he established the unsuccessful settlements at Roanoke, Virginia. This, along with the great war with Spain, once again shifted the focus of exploration and colonization away from Maine.
It was not until 1602 that English explorers returned to the North. That year Bartholomew Gosnold and Bartholomew Gilbert (the son of Sir Humphrey Gilbert) launched an expedition sponsored by the Earl of Southampton to establish a settlement in the northern portion of America. Sailing from Falmouth, England, in March 1602, they reached land on May 14, probably somewhere between Cape Porpoise and Cape Neddick. They proceeded around Cape Cod to Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, where they erected a permanent storehouse and fort and loaded the vessel with sassafras, cedar, and furs obtained from the Indians. However, when Gosnold decided to return to England in late July, the twelve men who were to remain at the settlement refused to stay behind. The little colony was abandoned, and Gosnold, with his entire crew, returned to England. Despite these disappointments, Gosnold's reports and cargo renewed interest in colonizing the north Atlantic coast. In addition, his adventures resulted in the first known report of the excellent fishing along the New England coast, a matter that had important implications for the region's future.
By the next summer Raleigh had been imprisoned as a suspected foe of the newly crowned James I, but a number of merchants sent out Martin Pring with two vessels, the Discoverer and the Speedwell. Their ambitions were apparently scaled down somewhat by recent court events, for Pring was instructed merely to obtain sassafras and trade with the Indians; there was no mention of colonization. Pring struck the Maine coast somewhere near Gosnold's landing, ranged northeastward, then turned southwest into Massachusetts Bay. He probably landed at Plymouth or Provincetown and put up some sort of building with a palisade. Pring returned carrying a substantial cargo of sassafras and a glowing description of the soils, trees, fur-bearing animals, and fish awaiting European exploitation.
Though nothing very significant had come of Pring's 1603 voyage, the Earl of Southampton renewed his colonizing efforts the following year, interested this time in a New World home for discontented English Catholics (an idea that had been circulating since the 1580s). He enlisted the aid of his Catholic son-in-law, Sir Thomas Arundell, and by the sprin