[537] J. P. Leslie’s Man’s Origin and Destiny, p. 114, for instance.
[538] Brevoort (Hist. Mag., xiii. 45) thinks that the “Isola Verde” and “Isle de Mai” of the fifteenth-century maps, lying in lat. 46° north, was Newfoundland with its adjacent bank, which he finds in one case represented. Samuel Robertson (Lit. & Hist. Soc. Quebec, Trans. Jan. 16) goes so far as to say that certain relics found in Canada may be Basque, and that it was a Basque whaler, named Labrador, who gave the name to the coast, which the early Portuguese found attached to it! We find occasional stories indicating knowledge of distant fishing coasts at a very early date, like the following:—
“In the yeere 1153 it is written that there came to Lubec, a citie of Germanie, one canoa with certaine indians, like unto a long barge, which seemed to have come from the coast of Baccalaos, which standeth in the same latitude that Germanie doth” (Galvano, Bethune’s edition, p. 56).
[539] W. D. Whitney, Life and Growth of Language, p. 258, says: “No other dialect of the old world so much resembles in structure the American languages.” Cf. Farrar’s Families of Speech, p. 132; Nott and Gliddon’s Indigenous Races, 48; H. de Charencey’s Des affinités de la langue Basque avec les idiomes du Nouveau Monde (Paris and Caen, 1867); and Julien Vinson’s “La langue basque et les langues Américaines” in the Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes (Nancy, 1875), ii. 46. On the other hand, Joly (Man before Metals, 316) says: “Whatever may be said to the contrary, Basque offers no analogy with the American dialects.”
These linguistic peculiarities enter into all the studies of this remarkable stock. Cf. J. F. Blade’s Etude sur l’origine des Basques (Paris, 1869); W. B. Dawkins in the Fortnightly Review, Sept., 1874, and his Cave Hunting, ch. 6, with Brabrook’s critique in the Journal Anthropological Institute, v. 5; and Julien Vinson on “L’Ethnographie des Basques” in Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie, Session de 1872, p. 49, with a map.
[540] But see Vol. III. 45; IV. 3. Forster (Northern Voyages, book iii. ch. 3 and 4) contends for these pre-Columbian visits of the European fishermen. Cf. Winsor’s Bibliog. of Ptolemy, sub anno 1508. The same currents and easterly trade-winds which helped Columbus might easily have carried chance vessels to the American coasts, as we have evidence, apparently, in the stern-post of a European vessel which Columbus saw at Guadaloupe. Haven cites Gumilla (Hist. Orinoco, ii. 208) as stating that in 1731 a bateau from Teneriffe was thrown upon the South American coast. Cf. J. P. Casselius, De Navigationibus fortuitis in Americam, ante Columbum factis (Magdeburg, 1742); Brasseur’s Popul Vuh, introd.; Hunt’s Merchants’ Mag. xxv. 275.
[541] Francisque-Michel, Le Pays Basque, 189, who says that the Basques were acquainted with the coasts of Newfoundland a century before Columbus (ch. 9).
Humboldt (Cosmos, Eng. ed. ii. 142) is not prepared to deny such early visits of the Basques to the northern fishing grounds. Cf. Gaffarel’s Rapport, p. 212. Harrisse (Notes on Columbus, 80) goes back very far: “The Basques and Northmen, we feel confident, visited these shores as early as the seventh century.”
There are some recent studies on these early fishing experiences in Ferd. Duro’s Disquisiciones nauticas (1881), and in E. Gelcich’s “Der Fischgang des Gascogner and die Entdeckung von Neufundland,” in the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin (1883), vol. xviii. pp. 249-287.
[542] Cf. M. Hamconius’ Frisia: seu de viris erbusque Frisiæ illustribus (Franckeræ, 1620), and L. Ph. C. v. d. Bergh’s Nederlands annspraak op de ontdekking van Amerika voor Columbus (Arnheim, 1850). Cf. Müller’s Catalogue (1877), nos. 303, 1343.