<P> The emergence of Dutch maritime power was swift and remarkable: for years Dutch sailors had participated in Portuguese voyages to the east, as able seafarers and keen mapmakers . In 1592, Cornelis de Houtman was sent by Dutch merchants to Lisbon, to gather as much information as he could about the Spice Islands . In 1595, merchant and explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, having travelled widely in the Indian Ocean at the service of the Portuguese, published a travel report in Amsterdam, the "Reys - gheschrift vande navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten" ("Report of a journey through the navigations of the Portuguese in the East"). This included vast directions on how to navigate between Portugal and the East Indies and to Japan . That same year Houtman followed this directions in the Dutch first exploratory travel that discovered a new sea route, sailing directly from Madagascar to Sunda Strait in Indonesia and signing a treaty with the Banten Sultan . </P> <P> Dutch and British interest, fed on new information, led to a movement of commercial expansion, and the foundation of English (1600), and Dutch (1602) chartered companies . Dutch, French, and English sent ships which flouted the Portuguese monopoly, concentrated mostly on the coastal areas, which proved unable to defend against such a vast and dispersed venture . </P> <P> The 1497 English expedition led by Italian Venetian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) was the first of a series of French and English missions exploring North America . Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas, as its resources were concentrated in Central and South America where more wealth had been found . These expeditions were hoping to find an oceanic Northwest Passage to Asian trade . This was never discovered, but other possibilities were found, and in the early 17th century colonists from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America . In 1520--1521 the Portuguese João Álvares Fagundes, accompanied by couples of mainland Portugal and the Azores, explored Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (possibly reaching the Bay of Fundy on the Minas Basin), and established a fishing colony on the Cape Breton Island, that would last until at least the 1570s or near the end of the century . </P> <P> In 1524, Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed at the behest of Francis I of France, who was motivated by indignation over the division of the world between Portuguese and Spanish . Verrazzano explored the Atlantic Coast of North America, from South Carolina to Newfoundland, and was the first recorded European to visit what would later become the Virginia Colony and the United States . In the same year Estevão Gomes, a Portuguese cartographer who had sailed in Ferdinand Magellan's fleet, explored Nova Scotia, sailing South through Maine, where he entered New York Harbor, the Hudson River and eventually reached Florida in August 1525 . As a result of his expedition, the 1529 Diogo Ribeiro world map outlines the East coast of North America almost perfectly . From 1534 to 1536, French explorer Jacques Cartier, believed to have accompanied Verrazzano to Nova Scotia and Brazil, was the first European to travel inland in North America, describing the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which he named "The Country of Canadas", after Iroquois names, claiming what is now Canada for Francis I of France . </P>

Explorers not being able to find gold in the new world led to what