<P> During the 1500s, the Spanish began to travel through and colonize North America . They were looking for gold in foreign kingdoms . By 1511 there were rumours of undiscovered lands to the northwest of Hispaniola . Juan Ponce de León equipped three ships with at least 200 men at his own expense and set out from Puerto Rico on 4 March 1513 to Florida and surrounding coastal area . Another early motive was the search for the Seven Cities of Gold, or "Cibola", rumoured to have been built by Native Americans somewhere in the desert Southwest . In 1536 Francisco de Ulloa, the first documented European to reach the Colorado River, sailed up the Gulf of California and a short distance into the river's delta . </P> <P> The Basques were fur trading, fishing cod and whaling in Terranova (Labrador and Newfoundland) in 1520, and in Iceland by at least the early 17th century . They established whaling stations at the former, mainly in Red Bay, and probably established some in the latter as well . In Terranova they hunted bowheads and right whales, while in Iceland they appear to have only hunted the latter . The Spanish fishery in Terranova declined over conflicts between Spain and other European powers during the late 16th and early 17th centuries . </P> <P> In 1524 the Portuguese Estevão Gomes, who had sailed in Ferdinand Magellan's fleet, explored Nova Scotia, sailing South through Maine, where he entered New York Harbor and the Hudson River and eventually reached Florida in August 1525 . As a result of his expedition, the 1529 Diego Ribeiro world map outlined the East coast of North America almost perfectly . </P> <P> In 1534 the explorer French Jacques Cartier described and mapped the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River . </P>

What two things hindered the growth of spanish colonies