The Dawn of Canadian History : A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada

by Stephen Leacock

Francis Fernandez and John Gonzales remained in the English service and became subjects of King Henry. Again, in the summer of 1502, they were sent out on another voyage from Bristol. In September they brought their ships safely back, and, in proof of the strangeness of the new lands they carried home 'three men brought out of an Iland forre beyond Irelond, the which were clothed in Beestes Skynnes and ate raw fflesh and were rude in their demeanure as Beestes.' From this description (written in an old atlas of the time), it looks as if the Fernandez expedition had turned north from the Great Banks and visited the coast where the Eskimos were found, either in Labrador or Greenland. This time Henry VII gave Fernandez and Gonzales a pension of ten pounds each, and made them 'captains' of the New Found Land. A sum of twenty pounds was given to the merchants of Bristol who had accompanied them. We must remember that at this time the New Found Land was the general name used for all the northern coast of America.

There is evidence that a further expedition went out from Bristol in 1503, and still another in 1504. Fernandez and Gonzales, with two English associates, were again the leaders. They were to have a monopoly of trade for forty years, but were cautioned not to interfere with the territory of the king of Portugal. Of the fate of these enterprises nothing is known.

By the time of Henry VIII, who began to reign in 1509, the annual fishing fleet of the English which sailed to the American coast had become important. As early as in 1522, a royal ship of war was sent to the mouth of the English Channel to protect the 'coming home of the New Found Island's fleet.' Henry VIII and his minister, Cardinal Wolsey, were evidently anxious to go on with the work of the previous reign, and especially to enlist the wealthy merchants and trade companies of London in the cause of western exploration. In 1521 the cardinal proposed to the Livery Companies of London—the name given to the trade organizations of the merchants—that they should send out five ships on a voyage into the New Found Land. When the merchants seemed disinclined to make such a venture, the king 'spake sharply to the Mayor to see it put in execution to the best of his power.' But, even with this stimulus, several years passed before a London expedition was sent out. At last, in 1527, two little ships called the Samson and the Mary of Guildford set out from London with instructions to find their way to Cathay and the Indies by means of the passage to the north. The two ships left London on May 10, put into Plymouth, and finally sailed therefrom on June 10, 1527. They followed Cabot's track, striking westward from the coast of Ireland. For three weeks they kept together, making good progress across the Atlantic. Then in a great storm that arose the Samson was lost with all on board.

The Mary of Guildford pursued her way alone, and her crew had adventures strange even for those days. Her course, set well to the north, brought her into the drift ice and the giant icebergs which are carried down the coast of America at this season (for the month was July) from the polar seas. In fear of the moving ice, she turned to the south, the sailors watching eagerly for the land, and sounding as they went. Four days brought them to the coast of Labrador. They followed it southward for some days. Presently they entered an inlet where they found a good harbour, many small islands, and the mouth of a great river of fresh water. The region was a wilderness, its mountains and woods apparently untenanted by man. Near the shore they saw the footmarks of divers great beasts, but, though they explored the country for about thirty miles, they saw neither men nor animals. At the end of July, they set sail again, and passed down the coast of Newfoundland to the harbour of St John's, already a well-known rendezvous. Here they found fourteen ships of the fishing fleet, mostly vessels from Normandy. From Newfoundland the Mary of Guildford pursued her way southward, and passed along the Atlantic coast of America. If she had had any one on board capable of accurate observation, even after the fashion of the time, or of making maps, the record of her voyage would have added much to the general knowledge of the continent. Unfortunately, the Italian pilot who directed the voyage was killed in a skirmish with Indians during a temporary landing. Some have thought that this pilot who perished on the Mary of Guildford may have been the great navigator Verrazano, of whom we shall presently speak.

The little vessel sailed down the coast to the islands of the West Indies. She reached Porto Rico in the middle of November, and from that island she made sail for the new Spanish settlements of San Domingo. Here, as she lay at her anchorage, the Mary of Guildford was fired upon by the Spanish fort which commanded the river mouth. At once she put out into the open sea, and, heading eastward across the Atlantic, she arrived safely at her port of London.

CHAPTER VI

FORERUNNERS OF JACQUES CARTIER

We have seen that after the return of the second expedition of the Cabots no voyages to the coasts of Canada of first-rate importance were made by the English. This does not mean, however, that nothing was done by other peoples to discover and explore the northern coasts of America. The Portuguese were the first after the Cabots to continue the search along the Canadian coast for the secret of the hidden East. At this time, we must remember, the Portuguese were one of the leading nations of Europe, and they were specially interested in maritime enterprise. Thanks to Columbus, the Spaniards had, it is true, carried off the grand prize of discovery. But the Portuguese had rendered service not less useful. From their coasts, jutting far out into the Atlantic, they had sailed southward and eastward, and had added much to the knowledge of the globe. For generations, both before and after Columbus, the pilots and sailors of Portugal were among the most successful and daring in the world.

For nearly a hundred years before the discovery of America the Portuguese had been endeavouring to find an ocean route to the spice islands of the East and to the great Oriental empires which, tradition said, lay far off on a distant ocean, and which Marco Polo and other travellers had reached by years of painful land travel across the interior of Asia. Prince Henry of Portugal was busy with these tasks at the middle of the fifteenth century. Even before this, Portuguese sailors had found their way to the Madeiras and the Canary Islands, and to the Azores, which lie a thousand miles out in the Atlantic. But under the lead of Prince Henry they began to grope their way down the coast of Africa, braving the torrid heats and awful calms of that equatorial region, where the blazing sun, poised overhead in a cloudless sky, was reflected on the bosom of a stagnant and glistening ocean. It was their constant hope that at some point the land would be found to roll back and disclose an ocean pathway round Africa to the East, the goal of their desire. Year after year they advanced farther, until at last they achieved a momentous result. In 1487, Bartholomew Diaz sailed round the southern point of Africa, which received the significant name of the 'Cape of Good Hope,' and entered the Indian Ocean. Henceforth a water pathway to the Far East was possible. Following Diaz, Vasco da Gama, leaving Lisbon in 1497, sailed round the south of Africa, and, reaching the ports of Hindustan, made the maritime route to India a definite reality.