Softly Comes the Dawn 141 



Historians as a whole take the view that there is no more truth in 

 the assertion that the Basques visited the North American coast in 

 the fourteenth century than there is in the old and quite baseless 

 story that Columbus learned of the New World from a Basque cap- 

 tain whom he met in the Azores. 



Nevertheless, there is absolute evidence that the Basques did reach 

 Newfoundland and several more distant points long before that date. 

 Even if there were not much evidence, it would still be obvious that 

 they must have known about America because Scandinavian ships 

 had been sailing regularly to and from Iceland since 1000 a.d., and 

 up until about 1300 a.d. they were still occasionally going to Green- 

 land. It was in 1362 a.d., you will remember, that King Magnus 

 Ericson of Norway sent his ill-fated expedition into Hudson's Bay to 

 look for the lost contingent of the Greenland colonies. Further, two 

 maps by Andrea de Bianco, dated 1436 and 1448, or more than half 

 a century before Columbus's arrival in the West Indies, show, far 

 west of Iceland, a large island named Isla de Stokafixa — Isle of Stock- 

 fish, or Codfish — which is by its position definitely Newfoundland. 

 Again, the Carta Catalan de Mecia de Viladestes, of 141 3, now in the 

 National Library of Paris, shows a whale and a caravel far north- 

 west of Iceland. The Icelanders did not build caravels or, as far as we 

 know from their records, follow the whale on the high seas. We 

 don't know of any other Europeans who were so engaged in such 

 ships at that time except the Basques. Moreover, the Basques reached 

 Iceland before 1400 a.d. and the Icelanders certainly knew of Green- 

 land and probably of Newfoundland and Vinland from their own 

 history. Finally, Newfoundland continued to be called the Isla de 

 Stokafixa on many maps until after 1500 a.d. 



While the codfishers went to the Grand Banks, off Newfoundland, 

 the whalers seem to have gone towards Greenland waters, where 

 they met the other species of right whale — the Bowhead, or Arctic 

 Right Whale, (Balaena mysticetus) —which they were definitely 

 catching by 1500 a.d. What is more, they continued to hold their 

 high-sea monopoly unchallenged for another century after that, 

 culminating in Fran9ois Sopite's great invention about 1600 a.d. But 

 shortly thereafter a number of events occurred rapidly that initiated 

 the Basques' decline, though there was still one Basque ship operating 

 as late as 1725. 



