1498.] SEBASTIAN CABOT EXPLORES THE COAST.

137

But the voyage was barren of any results of value, except that Sebastian noted that "in the seas thereabout were multitudes of big fishes that they call tunnies, which the inhabitants call Baccalaos, that they sometimes stopped his ship." And he therefore "named this land Baccalaos."1 Probably he left his three hundred emigrants somewhere on this inhospitable coast to make such settlement as they could, while he explored still farther northward. He reached the latitude of 673°, fighting his way through seas of ice, and looking anxiously for the gulf that should lead him to the Indies. "To his great displeasure" he found the coast, at length, trending eastward, probably on the peninsula of Cumberland; his crews, perhaps reduced in numbers by the hardships of such navigation, perhaps in despair and alarm at penetrating farther into a region where in July the cold was increasing and "the dayes very long in maner without any night," grew insubordinate and mutinous, and clamored to return. Turning southward, he picked up his three hundred colonists, or what was left of them, and sailed into pleasanter seas.

tinent.

"Ever intent to find that passage to India," and baffled in the search for it at the north, he hoped to discover it by run- First coast ning down the coast. Into what bays and estuaries he may exploration have penetrated; how anxiously he scanned the headlands; how diligently sounded for depth of water, and marked the set of currents that he might miss no indication of an opening to the west; or how long he was in making this first coast-survey of the Continent, there is no record.2 But doubtless he did his work faithfully and well, keeping along the shore of Maine and Massachusetts, missing no landmarks, doubling Cape Cod, perhaps rounding Nantucket and running into Buzzard's Bay and Long Island Sound, and approaching the harbor of New York; for he sometimes landed, found" on most

1 Peter Martyr, De Orbe Novo. But Dr. Kohl doubts this. The cod-fishery, he says, had long existed on the northern coasts of Europe, and the fish were called by the Germanic nations "Cabliauwe," or "Kabbeljouwe," or still farther transposed, "Backljau." The Portuguese changed it to Bacalhao. The root of the word is the Germanic "boleh," meaning fish. The name, therefore, could not have had an Indian origin. Maine Hist. Coll., vol. i., Second Series. Brevoort, on the other hand (Journal of the Am. Geog. Society, p. 205), says it is simply "an old Mediterranean or Romance name, given to the preserved codfish, when it has been dried and kept open and extended by the help of a small stick. This was the stockfish of the North, and from the word Baculum, it became the Bacalao and Baccalieu of the South of Europe."

2 Brevoort and Stevens doubt if Cabot ever sailed south of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Peter Martyr-who says, "Cabot is my very friend whom I use familiarly and delight to have him sometimes keepe me company in mine own house asserts "that he was thereby brought so far into the South by reason of the land bending so much southwards, that it was there almost equal in latitude with the sea Fretum Herculeum (Straits of Gibraltar) having the north pole elevate in the same degree." Gomara says that Cabot sailed so far north that "the days were very long, as it were without night;" and that he followed the coast southward to the 38°, whence he returned home.

of the places, copper or brass among the aborigines," and captured some of the natives and brought them home to England. But when he had reached 38° north, that is, about Cape Hatteras, his provisions failing, he changed his course for Bristol.

Last years

Cabot.

Whether Sebastian Cabot was satisfied that no passage to of Sebastian Cathay was to be found between 67° and 38°, north latitude, there is nowhere any positive assurance. He lived, however, to be eighty years of age; in the course of that long life he held the honorable and influential position of Pilot-major both in Spain and England; he led, in the service of Spain, an eventful expedition to the Rio de la Plata; in the service of England he sent another to Russia, and established commercial intercourse between the two nations; but, unless he made a third voyage to North America in 1516, which was certainly projected, though its accomplishment is questioned, he abandoned, after his return in 1498, all farther attempts at discovery or settlement on the coast of North America. The honor of the discovery of the mainland of the continent was his; but seventy years passed away

Sebastian Cabot.

before the first permanent colony was planted north of the Gulf of Mexico.

CHAPTER VII.

SPANISH DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS.

DESIGNS FOR THE DISCOVERY OF A NORTHWEST PASSAGE TO INDIA. — THE CORTEREAL VOYAGES. - VASCO NUÑEZ DE BALBOA REACHES THE PACIFIC OCEAN. SEARCH FOR THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.-FLORIDA DISCovered. — GULF OF MEXICO SAILED OVER. -EXPLORATIONS ON THE ATLANTIC SEA-COAST.- ESTAVAN GOMEZ ON THE BORDERS OF THE UNITED STATES. EXPEDITION OF PAMPHILO DE NARVAEZ TO FLORIDA. — ADVENTURES OF CABEÇA DE VACA. — THE ENTERPRISE OF HERNANDO DE SOTO.- THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. - DEATH AND DRAMATIC BURIAL OF DE SOTO.- RETURN OF THE TROOPS OF DE SOTO. - TRISTAN DE LUNA'S ATTEMPT TO FOUND A COLONY.

THAT the Cabots were the first modern discoverers of the Western Continent, or, indeed, that Columbus was the first European who, in the fifteenth century, visited the New World, is not undisputed. John Skolnus, or John of Kolno, a Pole, is said to have been on the coast of Labrador in 1477; it is claimed by some French writers that in 1488 one Cousin, a Frenchman of Dieppe, was driven across the Atlantic and made land on the other side at the mouth of a wide river; that with him was one of that family of Pinzons of Palos which gave, fou years later, captains- one of them perhaps this very captain- to two of the three ships of Columbus. The evidence of such an expedition is so slight, that constructive arguments have only more or less weight as they are more or less ingenious.

Jealousy of

among other

powers.

When, however, the path to the new Indies was fairly opened, in the last decade of the fifteenth century, fresh voyages followed in rapid succession, and not navigators only, but sov- Spain ereigns vied with each other to share with Spain the glory European and the riches of the new discoveries. Henry VII. of England, when he gave a patent to the Cabots, no doubt reflected that Columbus might have been an English, rather than a Spanish admiral. The king of Portugal did not attempt to conceal his chagrin that the dominion and power which had fallen, or inevitably would fall, into the hands of Spain, he had rejected. But though Spain could not be interfered with at the south, it was still possible to find the yet undiscovered way to India by a northern passage; there might still be unknown islands, or even continents, full of gold and heathen men, in northern seas.

Gaspar Cor

passage.

In 1500, accordingly, two caravels were dispatched from Portugal under the command of Gaspar Cortereal, in search of a pastereal seek sage to India in northern latitudes. He made no settlement, but explored the coast, either on that or a second voyage made the next year, for six or seven hundred miles, as far north as the fiftieth parallel, where his further progress was stopped by the ice. The country he called Terra de Labrador-the land of laborersthough that name was afterwards transferred to a region farther north.

The people were like Gypsies in color, well made, intelligent, and modest; they lived in wooden houses, clothed themselves in skins and furs, used "swords made of a kind of stones, and pointed their arrows with the same material." The country abounded with timber, especially pine; the seas were full of fish of various kinds; and, with such natural advantages, added to its populousness, it was thought that its acquisition might prove valuable to Portugal. If Cortereal did not open a way to India, or find mines of gold to rival those of Hispaniola, at least he had discovered, as he hoped, a new Slave Coast, and he enticed or forced on board his caravels fifty-seven of the natives whom he meant to sell as slaves. These were pronounced as "admirably calculated for labor, and the best slaves ever seen."1

1 The Cortereal voyages are not free from the confusion which surrounds so many of the early narratives. Several writers (see Barrow's Chronological History of Voyages; Lardner's Cyclopædia; Edinburgh Cabinet Library) following Cordeiro's Historia Insularia, assert that Newfoundland was first discovered by John Vaz Costa Cortereal in 1463 or 1464; but Biddle (Memoir of Cabot, book ii., chapter 11) shows that there is no good authority for any such voyage. A passage in the life of his father by Ferdinand Colon, however, seems to have been overlooked by all these writers. He says that Vincent Dear, a Portuguese,

1502.]

THE CORTEREAL VOYAGES.

141

Cortereal made two voyages, but from the second he never came back. It is uncertain what his fate was. He may have been Fate of the lost at sea; or, as it has been conjectured, he may have been Cortereals. killed by the natives in an attempt to kidnap another cargo of slaves, or in revenge for the capture of those stolen on the previous voyage. But this, of course, involves the presumption that the kidnapping was on his first expedition, and that the retribution fell upon him on his return to the coast. But the latest and most reasonable suggestion is that it was on his second voyage that he committed this outrage upon the Indians, and that he and his fifty captives perished together at And this is the more probable conjecture since we know that Miguel Cortereal, a younger brother, sailed from Lisbon, on the 10th of May, 1502, with two vessels, in search of Gaspar, eight months after the report of the arrival of one of Gaspar's caravels. The Indians may have punished him also for his brother's cruelty to their kindred, for he did not return. The next year the king sent out an expedition in quest of both, but that came back without tidings of

sea.

returning from Guinea to Terceira, saw, or thought he saw, an island, and told this to one Luke de Gazzana, a wealthy Genoese merchant. Gazzana sent out a vessel, and "the pilot went out three or four times to seek the said island, sailing from one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty leagues, but all in vain, for he found no land. Yet for all this, neither he (Gazzana) nor his partner gave over the enterprise till death, always hoping to find it." Ferdinand Colon adds that a brother of Gazzana also told him that he knew the sons of "the captain who discovered Terceira," Gaspar and Michael Cortereal, "who went several times to discover that land; and it is plain from the context that Ferdinand Colon means to refer to distinct expeditions to the West — those before his father's first voyage by Gazzana's direction, when John Vaz Costa Cortereal was governor of Terceira; and these by the younger Cortereals in 1500. It was natural enough that these expeditions should be confounded with each other, and this confusion was not cleared up even when Hakluyt published the first edition of his voyages in 1582, who says: An excellent learned man of Portugal, of singular gravety, authortie, and experience, tolde me very lately that one Gonus Cortereal, captayne of the yle of Terceira, about the yeare 1574, which is not above eight years past, sent a ship to discover the North West Passage." Here is an obvious mistake of about a century.

In regard to the actual expedition of Gaspar Cortereal, the principal original source of information hitherto relied upon, is the letter of Pietro Pasqualigo, Venetian Ambassador to Portugal, to his brother, October 19, 1501. This was first published in a volume of voyages printed in Venice in 1507, under the title Paesi Novamente retrovati et Novo Mondo. But Dr. Kohl (Collections of Maine Hist. Society, 1869), relying upon some recent researches in the Portuguese archives by M. Kuntsmann (Die Entdeckung America's), assumes that Pasqualigo's letter refers to the second voyage of Cortereal, and that the caravel, on board which he was with fifty of the Indians, never arrived. The letter says: "On the 8th of the present month one of the two caravels which his most serene majesty dispatched last year on a voyage of discovery to the North, under the command of Gaspar Corterat, arrived here. They have brought hither of the inhabitants, seven in all, men, women, and children, and in the other caravel, which is looked for every hour, there are fifty more." If this was the first voyage, the other caravel subsequently arrived with the fifty Indians, as Cortereal certainly made a second expedition. The date alone of the letter (October, 1501)—if Cortereal sailed in 1500-suggests that Pasqualigo confounded the two voyages, and that he refers to the second, from which Cortereal did not return.