Part 63 (1/2)

[Sidenote: 1504. Normans and Bretons.]

In the north, the discoveries of the English under Cabot, and of the Portuguese under the Cortereals, soon led the Normans and Bretons from Dieppe and Saint Malo to follow in the wake of such predecessors. As early as 1504 the fishermen of these latter peoples seem to have been on the northern coasts, and we owe to them the name of Cape Breton, which is thought to be the oldest French name in our American geography. It is the ”Gran Capitano” of Ramusio who credits the Bretons with these early visits at the north, though we get no positive cartographical record of such visits till 1520, in a map which is given by Kunstmann in his _Atlas_.

[Sidenote: 1505. Portuguese.]

Again, in 1505, some Portuguese appear to have been on the Newfoundland coast under the royal patronage of Henry VII. of England, and by 1506 the Portuguese fishermen were regular frequenters of the Newfoundland banks. We find in the old maps Portuguese names somewhat widely scattered on the neighboring coast lines, for the frequenting of the region by the fishermen of that nation continued well towards the close of the century.

[Sidenote: 1506. Spaniards.]

There are also stories of one Velasco, a Spaniard, visiting the St.

Lawrence in 1506, and Juan de Agramonte in 1511 entered into an agreement with the Spanish King to pursue discovery in these parts more actively, but we have no definite knowledge of results.

[Sidenote: 1517. Sebastian Cabot.]

[Sidenote: 1521. Portuguese.]

The death of Ferdinand, January 23, 1516, would seem to have put a stop to a voyage which had already been planned for Spain by Sebastian Cabot, to find a northwest pa.s.sage; but the next year (1517) Cabot, in behalf of England, had sailed to Hudson's Strait, and thence north to 67 30', finding ”no night there,” and observing extraordinary variations of the compa.s.s. Somewhat later there are the very doubtful claims of the Portuguese to explorations under f.a.gundes about the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1521.

[Sidenote: 1506. Ango's captains.]

[Sidenote: Denys's map.]

[Sidenote: 1518. Lery.]

By 1506 also there is something like certainty respecting the Normans, and under the influence of a notable Dieppese, Jean Ango, we soon meet a cla.s.s of adventurous mariners tempting distant and marvelous seas. We read of Pierre Crignon, and Thomas Aubert, both of Dieppe, Jean Denys of Honfleur, and Jean Parmentier, all of whom have come down to us through the pages of Ramusio. It is of Jean Denys in 1506, and of Thomas Aubert a little later, that we find the fullest recitals. To Denys there has been ascribed a mysterious chart of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; but if the copy which is preserved represents it, there can be no hesitation in discarding it as a much later cartographical record. The original is said to have been found in the archives of the ministry of war in Paris so late as 1854, but no such map is found there now. The copy which was made for the Canadian archives is at Ottawa, and I have been favored by the authorities there with a tracing of it. No one of authority will be inclined to dispute the judgment of Harrisse that it is apocryphal. We are accordingly left in uncertainty just how far at this time the contour of the Golfo Quadrago, as the Gulf of St. Lawrence was called, was made out. Aubert is said to have brought to France seven of the natives of the region in 1509. Ten years or more later (1519, etc.), the Baron de Lery is thought to have attempted a French settlement thereabouts, of which perhaps the only traces were some European cattle, the descendants of his small herd landed there in 1528, which were found on Sable Island many years later.

[Sidenote: 1526. Nicholas Don.]

We know from Herrera that in 1526 Nicholas Don, a Breton, was fis.h.i.+ng off Baccalaos, and Rut tells us that in 1527 Norman and Breton vessels were pulling fish on the sh.o.r.es of Newfoundland. Such mentions mark the early French knowledge of these northern coasts, but there is little in it all to show any contribution to geographical developments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PETER MARTYR, 1511.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PONCE DE LEON.

[From Barcia's _Herrera_.]]

[Sidenote: Attempts to connect the northern discoveries with those of the Spanish.]

[Sidenote: 1511. Peter Martyr's map.]

[Sidenote: 1512. Ponce de Leon.]

[Sidenote: 1513. March.]

[Sidenote: Florida.]

Before this, however, the first serious attempt of which we have incontrovertible evidence was made to connect these discoveries in the north with those of the Spanish in the Antilles. As early as 1511 the map given by Peter Martyr had shown that, from the native reports or otherwise, a notion had arisen of lands lying north of Cuba. In 1512 Ponce de Leon was seeking a commission to authorize him to go and see what this reported land was like, with its fountain of youth. He got it February 23, 1512, when Ferdinand commissioned him ”to find and settle the island of Bimini,” if none had already been there, or if Portugal had not already acquired possession in any part that he sought. Delays in preparation postponed the actual departure of his expedition from Porto Rico till March, 1513. On the 23d of that month, Easter Sunday, he struck the mainland somewhere opposite the Bahamas, and named the country Florida, from the day of the calendar. He tracked the coast northward to a little above 30 north lat.i.tude. Then he retraced his way, and rounding the southern cape, went well up the western side of the peninsula. Whether any stray explorers had been before along this sh.o.r.e may be a question. Private Spanish or Portuguese adventurers, or even Englishmen, had not been unknown in neighboring waters some years earlier, as we have evidence. We find certainly in this voyage of Ponce de Leon for the first time an unmistakable official undertaking, which we might expect would soon have produced its cartographical record. The interdicts of the Council of the Indies were, however, too powerful, and the old lines of the Cantino map still lingered in the maps for some years, though by 1520 the Floridian peninsula began to take recognizable shape in certain Spanish maps.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PONCE DE LEON'S TRACK.]

[Sidenote: Bimini.]