20 Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 190.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Spanish Government still claimed for its subjects the right to fish on the Newfoundland coast, among other grounds on that of prior discovery, a claim which was only finally relinquished under the provisions of the Peace of Paris in 1763;21 and, writing about the same date, the author of the European Settlements in America noted that the Spaniards still shared in the fishery.22
21 As to the question whether Basque fishermen had found their way to Newfoundland before Cabot, see the note to p. 189 of Mr. Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World. The reasons for thinking that these fishermen forestalled Cabot seem to be—(1) the argument of probability; (2) assertions of old writers to that effect; (3) the application of the Basque name 'Baccalaos' to Newfoundland, and the statement of Peter Martyr that Cabot found that word in use for codfish among the natives; (4) the claim advanced by the Spanish Government to right of fishing at Newfoundland on the ground of prior discovery by Biscayan fishermen. As to this last point, see Papers relative to the rupture with Spain, 1762. One source of friction at this time between Great Britain and Spain was what Pitt styles in a dispatch (p. 3) 'the stale and inadmissible pretensions of the Biscayans and Guipuscoans to fish at Newfoundland.' As to this claim, the Earl of Bristol, British minister at Madrid, writes (p. 53), 'With regard to the Newfoundland fishery, Mr. Wall urged, what I have also conveyed in some former despatches, that the Spaniards indeed pleaded, in favour of their claim to a share of the Bacallao trade, the first discovery of that island.'
22 European Settlements in America, pt. 6, chap. xxviii, 'Newfoundland.' The author (? Burke) says, 'The French and Spaniards, especially the former, have a large share (in the fishery).'
Hayes, who has just been quoted, tells us that more than thirty years before he wrote, i.e. about 1550, the Portuguese had touched at Sable Island and left there 'both neat and swine to breed.' In the same way they left live stock at Mauritius on their way to and from the East; and in like manner the Spaniards landed pigs at the Bermudas23 on their early voyages to the West Indies.
23 See vol. i of this series, p. 163, and vol. ii, p. 6 and note. Lescarbot states that the French Baron de Léry, who attempted to found a colony in North America in 1518, left cattle on Sable Island. See Parkman's Pioneers of France, p. 193, and Doyle's History of the English in America, vol. i, chap. v, p. 111.
| Names in North America indicate visits from Southern Europe. |
If evidence were wanted that, in the oldest days of movement from Europe to the West, southern sailors did not go only to tropical America, it would be found in the naming of the North American coasts and islands. The first point on the coast of North America, sighted by the first discoverer—the Italian Cabot—was spoken of under the Italian name of Prima Terra Vista. The name Baccalaos24 tells of voyages of the Basques, as Cape Breton of visitors from Brittany; and, after Corte Real's voyages, the east coast of Newfoundland was, as old maps testify, christened for a while Terra de Corte Reall.25 Soon, however, the Spaniards found Mexico, Peru, and Central America enough and more than enough to absorb their whole attention; the Portuguese were over-weighted by their eastern empire and Brazil: and North America was given over, first to be explored and then to be settled, by the peoples of the north of Europe; who gathered strength as their southern rivals declined, and whose work was more lasting because more slow.
24 'Baccalaos' is the Spanish name for codfish. It is of Basque origin. Cabot, it is stated, gave the name generally to the lands which he found. The name was subsequently applied more especially to Newfoundland. Thus Edward Hayes in his account of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's last voyage, under the heading 'a brief relation of the Newfoundland and the commodities thereof' (Hakluyt, iii, 193), speaks of 'that which we do call the Newfoundland and the Frenchmen Bacalaos.' Various small islands, however, in these parts were also given this name by different writers. At the present day, on the maps of Newfoundland, an islet off the east coast, at the extreme north of the peninsula of Avalon, bears the name of Baccalieu. See Parkman, p. 189 note as above, and the chapter on the voyages of the Cabots in Justin Winsor's history, vol. iii.
25 The name 'Labrador' is supposed to have been derived from the fact that some North American natives, brought back in one of the ships which accompanied Corte Real on this second voyage, were said to be 'admirably calculated for labour and the best slaves I have ever seen.' Hence the name 'Laboratoris terra,' or Labrador. On Thorne's map (1527) printed in the Divers Voyages to America, there appears 'Nova terra Laboratorum dicta.' Sir Clements Markham, in his edition of the Journal of Columbus, Cabot, and Corte Real (Hakluyt Society, 1893, Int. p. 51, note), says: 'There is no reference to Labrador in any of the authorities for the voyages of Corte Real. The King of Portugal is said to have hoped to derive good slave labour from the lands discovered by Corte Real. That is all. The name Labrador is not Portuguese; and Corte Real was never on the Labrador coast.' Another derivation given is: 'This land was discovered by the English from Bristol, and named Labrador because the one who saw it first was a labourer from the Azores.' One more derivation is that Labrador was the name of the Basque captain of a fishing-vessel. See Justin Winsor, vol. iv, chap. i, pp. 2, 46, and Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 216, note.