Thus early they learned to trade as shrewdly as they navigated, and every voyage directly concerned a whole neighborhood.
This kind of enterprise was peculiar to New England because other resources were lacking.

To the westward the French were more interested in exploring the rivers leading to the region of the Great Lakes and in finding fabulous rewards in furs.

The Dutch on the Hudson were similarly engaged by means of the western trails to the country of the Iroquois, while the planters of Virginia had discovered an easy opulence in the tobacco crop, with slave labor to toil for them, and they were not compelled to turn to the hardships and the hazards of the sea.

The New Englander, hampered by an unfriendly climate, hard put to it to grow sufficient food, with land immensely difficult to clear, was between the devil and the deep sea, and he sagaciously chose the latter.

Elsewhere in the colonies the forest was an enemy to be destroyed with infinite pains.