Peninsulas which conspicuously lack an intercontinental location must long await their intermediary phase of development, but do not escape it. The Cornish, Breton and Iberian peninsulas were all prominent in the trans-Atlantic enterprises of Europe from the end of the fifteenth century. The first French sailors to reach the new world were Breton and Norman fishermen. Plymouth, as the chief port of the Cornish peninsula, figures prominently in the history of English exploration and settlement in America. It seems scarcely accidental that most of Queen Elizabeth's great sea captains were natives of this district—Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and Sir Walter Raleigh, the latter holding the office of vice-admiral of Cornwall and Devon. It was the peninsula-like projection of South America about Cape St. Roque, twenty degrees farther east than Labrador, that welcomed the ships of Cabral and Americus Vespucius, and secured to Portugal a foothold in the Western Hemisphere.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XII
Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 336. London, 1896-1898.
D.G. Brinton, The American Race, p. 41. Philadelphia, 1901.
D.G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 239-240. Philadelphia, 1901. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 336. London, 1896-1898.
A.E. Wallace, Island Life, p. 14. New York, 1892.
A. Heilprin, Geographical Distribution of Animals, p. 69, map. 1887.
Ibid., pp. 78, 82, 90, 100.
Darwin, Origin of Species, Chap. XII. New York, 1895. A.R. Wallace, Island Life, p. 6. New York, 1892.