The Hakluyts envisioned many different types of resources in the New World, but specifically ennumerated the naval stores they thought that English settlers could harvest. These included "Pitch, Tarre, [and] Masts." They also hoped that plantations might produce other useful goods, such as flax and hemp, as well as fine construction lumber. They also emphasized skins, pelts, and "the trade of Whale and Seale fishing...and divers other fishing" that was already being done by Englishmen in the North Atlantic. These commodities did actually exist in abundance in North America, and their advocacy for the development of sugar plantations was prescient. But they also hoped that the region would have gold, silver, copper, "Yron" and other metals in abundance, which it did not not (with the debatable exception of iron). And they looked forward to planting the New World with grapes, which could be used to develop a new source of wine (France even at that point had a reputation for fine wines.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hakluyt
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