EARLY FISHING STAGES.
[This cut is a fac-simile of one in the corner of A New and Correct Map of America, 1738, which belongs to Sir William Keith’s History of the British Plantations in America: Part I., Virginia, London, 1738. It presumably represents the fashion of these appliances of the fishermen which had prevailed perhaps for centuries.
It was suggested by Forster, Northern Voyages, book iii. chaps. iii. and iv., that Breton fishermen may have been on the Newfoundland coast before Columbus. Scholars are coming more and more to believe the possibility and even probability of it. Every third day in the calendar was then a fast-day, and the incentive to seeking fish on distant seas was great. That Cabot should find the natives of this region calling the cod baccalaos, a name applied by the seamen of the Bay of Biscay to that fish, has also been suggestive; but this story, deducible apparently from no earlier writer than Peter Martyr in 1516, is not altogether trustworthy, since there is doubt if the folk who called the fish by that name were the natives, as Martyr seems to think, or simply the common people, as would seem to be implied in other forms of the statement (see Vol. III. p. 45). Greenland, as we know from the pre-Columbian maps (Ptolemy of 1482, etc.), was considered a part of Europe. Its adjacent shores were in the common mind but further outposts of the same continent; so that the returned sailors’ reports of the distant parts—islands they thought them—might cause no awakening of the idea of a new world. Cf. Navarrete, Viages, iii. 41, 46, 176; Eusebius, Chronicon (1512), p. 172; Wytfliet, Histoire des Indes, p. 131; Lescarbot, Nouvelle France (1618), p. 228; Biard, Relation (1616), chap. i.; Champlain (1632), p. 9; Charlevoix, Nouvelle France, i. 4, 14, or Shea’s edition, i. 106; Estancelin, Navigateurs Normands; Kunstmann, Entdeckung Amerikas, pp. 69, 125; Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters, etc., p. 332; Vitet, Histoire de la Dieppe, p. 51; Harrisse, Cabots, p. 271; Kohl, Discovery of Maine, pp. 188, 201, 203, 205, 280; Parkman, Pioneers, p. 171; Mag. of Amer. Hist., 1882, April; N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1880, p. 229, etc.—Ed.]
Miguel also was never heard of again. Another expedition, sent out at the expense of the King, a year later, returned without having found a trace of either brother. And yet once more, the oldest of the family, Vasqueanes Cortereal, then governor of Terceira, proposed to undertake the quest in person; but Emanuel refused the necessary permission, declining to risk the lives of more of his subjects.
The Cortereals had no successors among their countrymen in the attempt to reach the Indies by the Northwest Passage; but their voyages opened for Portugal a source of much trade. Individuals, and perhaps companies or associations, soon followed in their track in the pursuit of fish, until the Portuguese enterprises of this sort on the American coasts grew to large proportions, and produced considerable revenue for the State.
The consolidation of France into one great kingdom may be said to date from 1524, when the death of Claude, the wife of Francis I., vested the hereditary right to the succession of Brittany in the crown of France. The marriage of Charles VIII. with Anne, Claude’s mother, in 1491, had brought the last of the feudal fiefs into subjection; but it required many years to make the inhabitants of these provinces Frenchmen, and the rulers at Paris exercised little authority over the towns and principalities of the interior. The coasts of Normandy and Brittany were peopled by a race of adventurous mariners, some of them exercising considerable power; as, for instance, the Angos of Dieppe, one of whom (Jean) was ennobled, and created viscount and captain of that town. Such places as Dieppe, Honfleur, St. Malo, and others had already furnished men and leaders for voyages of exploration and discovery. These had made expeditions to the Canaries and the African coast, and the fishing population of the French provinces were not unused to voyages of considerable length. They were not slow, then, in seeking a share in the advantages offered by the new countries discovered by Cabot and Cortereal, and they speedily became skilful and powerful in the American fisheries. The fishermen of the ports of Brittany are known to have reached the Newfoundland shores as early as 1504. They have left there an enduring trace in the name of Cape Breton, which, in one form or another, is found upon very early maps. Two years afterward Jean Denys, who was from Honfleur, is said to have visited the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and to have made a chart of it; but what now passes for such a chart is clearly of later origin. Another two years elapse, and we read of the voyage, in 1508, of a Dieppe mariner, Thomas Aubert by name, who is said to have brought home the first specimens of the American natives. A contemporary chronicle relates the visit of seven of those savages to Rouen in 1509. The frequency of the voyages of these fishermen and their skill in navigation are proved by the provision in Juan de Agramonte’s commission from the Spanish Crown, in 1511, that he might employ as pilots of his proposed expedition two mariners from Brittany.[11] In 1518, or (as M. d’Avezac thinks) perhaps a few years later, the Baron de Léry attempted a French settlement in the new country. But storms and unfavorable circumstances brought about the failure of this expedition.[12]
We have few particulars of the early life of Giovanni da Verrazano, who commanded the first French expedition sent out under royal auspices. The date of his birth is uncertain; but he is supposed to have been born shortly after 1480, in Florence,—where members of the family had attained high office at various times,—and to have been the son of Piero Andrea da Verrazano and Fiametta Capella. He is said to have travelled extensively, to have passed some years in Egypt and Syria, and to have visited the East Indies. It has also been stated, but on doubtful authority, that he commanded one of Aubert’s ships in that mariner’s expedition to America in 1508. With the year 1521 Verrazano begins to appear in Spanish history as a French corsair; in which character, and under the name of Juan Florin or Florentin, he preyed upon the commerce between Spain and her new-found possessions. It was, perhaps, while engaged in this occupation that he gained the notice and favor of Francis I. Indeed, his voyage of discovery was immediately preceded by, or even connected with, one of these predatory cruises. The Portuguese ambassador in France, Joâo da Silveira, wrote home, April 25, 1523: “Joâo Verezano, who is going on the discovery of Cathay, has not left up to this date, for want of opportunity, and because of differences, I understand, between himself and men.” And Verrazano himself says, in the cosmographical appendix to his letter, that the object of his expedition was to reach Cathay by a westward voyage, and that he expected to be able to penetrate any intervening land. But we know from Spanish sources that in May or June of this same year, 1523, Juan Florin captured the treasure sent home by Cortes to the Emperor, and brought it into La Rochelle; and Verrazano speaks in the beginning of his letter to the King of his success against the Spaniards.[13]