140 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



bankrupt. England signed regular trade and diplomatic treaties with 

 the Basque communities as early as the twelfth century, and the two 

 peoples seem to have always had a great regard for each other. 



This widespread trade continued with the extensive navigations 

 after whales, and the curiously ambiguous position of the Basques 

 themselves, in the midst of continuous international rivalries, led 

 them into some strange situations. Unfortunately, although the 

 Basques were intensely and racially exclusive, they did not think of 

 themselves nationally, and they made no attempt to record their his- 

 tory or activities until a later date. What is more, like the Phoeni- 

 cians, they were somewhat secretive about their voyages and their 

 discoveries. As a result, about a century ago furious arguments broke 

 out among historians regarding the latter — debates that are still go- 

 ing on. The trouble seems to have been started by one Marc Lescar- 

 bot in 1 609 in his Histoire in which he said he had seen a chart made 

 by Guillaume Postel, who died in 1581, on which Newfoundland 

 was shown, with a note that it "was visited and frequented by the 

 Gauls earlier than 1600 years previously," namely at the beginning 

 of the Christian Era. This is obviously absurd in view of the Norse 

 discoveries, but everybody immediately began trying to reduce the 

 date by leaving off either the initial or terminal unit, giving us 600 or 

 1 60 years respectively. Now, the first gives us the date of the Norse 

 discovery of Vinland, 1000 a.d., and the latter the year 1420 a.d. 



How the Basques became substituted for the Gauls is not clear, 

 but various French writers filled with righteous national pride, and 

 knowing of the extensive voyages of their Basques, claimed and set 

 out to prove that they reached America before Columbus reached 

 the West Indies, giving dates for such discovery from the end of 

 the fourteenth century to about 1420. In the earliest colonial days of 

 Canada, Basques are known to have visited the Grand Banks an- 

 nually in search of codfish, which they cured at semipermanent 

 settlements on Newfoundland, and they communicated with the 

 Amerindians and the Eskimos farther north in a sort of pidgin- 

 Basque-Indian jargon. Certain stone buildings in the New World are 

 believed by some to have been Basque watchtowers; and gravestones 

 with Basque inscriptions, but all of a later date, have been found in 

 Newfoundland. However, the first voyages to Newfoundland that 

 are definitely recorded in Basque archives are dated 1538 to 1540. 



