Excerpts From
Alan Taylor's American Colonies

(p. 118) A map for the reading can be found here

During the sixteenth century, Spanish and French mariners explored the long coast north of Florida and south of Acadia (Nova Scotia) but deemed (To regard as; consider) the temperate region of little value for colonies: too cool for tropical crops but too warm for the best furs. Foiled in Florida during the 1560s, the French thereafter kept to the north, exploiting the fish and furs of Acadia Canada. After retaking Florida, the Spanish established undermanned missions as far north as Chesapeake Bay (in present day Virginia), but native resistance compelled their retreat in 1572. Thereafter, the Spanish concluded that Florida adequately protected the precious heartland of their empire to the south in Mexico and the Caribbean.

Neglected by the Spanish and French, the Atlantic seaboard remained open to English colonization. Previously, English mariners had explored the frigid waters and barren coasts north of Labrador, in a vain search for gold and the Northwest Passage to China... But English leaders considered Newfoundland too cold and barren for year-round inhabitation by colonists. Moreover, during the mid-sixteenth century, the English were preoccupied with the conquest and colonization of Ireland.

(p.169)

By colonial standards, New England attracted an unusual set of emigrants: the sort of settled and prosperous people who ordinarily staved at home rather than risk the rigors of a transatlantic crossing and the uncertainties of colonial life. Most seventeenth-century English emigrants [elsewhere] were poor young single men who lacked prospects in the mother country. Seeking regular meals in the short term and a farm in the long, they gambled their lives as indentured servants in the Chesapeake or the West Indies. In sharp contrast, most of the New England colonists could pay their own way and emigrated as family. In 1631 a Puritan boasted that the emigrants were "endowed with grace and furnished with means." They also enjoyed a more even balance between the sexes. At mid-century, the New England sex ratio was six males for eve four females, compared with four male for every female in the Chesapeake [with even fewer females in the Spanish Colonies to the south]. Greater balance encouraged a more stable society and a faster population growth.

[With its temperate climate], New England lacked a profitable plantation crop [sellable in Europe] that would both demand and finance the importation of indentured servants. During the 1630s, indentured servants constituted less than a fifth of the New England emigrants.

And in contrast to the Chesapeake and West Indies, where servants came in large numbers for sale upon arrival to new masters, almost all of the New England servants came with the emigrant families, generally one or two per family. Over time, the servant numbers declined as their terms expired and they acquired their own land, for most New Englanders Could not afford to buy replacements. By the end of the century, servants amounted to less than 5 percent of the New English population.

Nor could the New Englanders afford to buy Africans. In 1700 less than 2 percent of New England's inhabitants were slaves, compared 13 percent for Virginia and 78 percent for the English West Indies.