26 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



of Spanish The Spaniards, who fished in these waters, were Basques 

 along imth f rom t i ie g av o f Biscay, and, as there were French Basques 

 skips, from the border towns of St. Jean de Luz and Sibiburo, it is 

 difficult to say whether most of those who were counted as 

 Spaniards were not really French, or were counted twice over. 

 The Basques were the great, and at first the only hunters 

 after whales and walruses in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 although they also fished for cod. They were numerous 

 after Cartier's discovery of the walruses on the Magdalen 

 Islands (1534); but had probably frequented these waters at 

 least as early as I530. 1 They were usually found in the 

 company of French or Portuguese; thus, in 1583, out of 

 thirty-six ships at St. John's there were twenty Spanish and 

 Portuguese ships ; and ten years later, according to the 

 accounts of English privateers, many Basque ships from 

 France and Spain, and a few Breton ships were busily 

 employed in catching cod, whale, and walrus on the south 

 coasts of Newfoundland, and on the coasts of Cape Breton 

 Island, in small scattered groups of two or four sail, and 

 there was a large fleet of over sixty Basque ships in Placentia 

 Bay, only eight of which were Spanish. 



of ' Portn- The Portuguese also fished in company with other nations. 

 S u'itk a " S R UI ' S fourteen ships at St. John's (1527), Roberval's seven- 

 Frenck and teen ships at St. John's (1542), Haie's one hundred ships on 

 ^'^'the Great Banks (1583) were partly Portuguese and partly 

 French ; and the twenty foreign ships in St. John's in 1583 

 were partly Spanish and partly Portuguese. 2 The Portuguese 

 were always ready to fraternize with their rivals, and, about 

 1550, turned swine and goats loose on Sablon Island, 

 whereby Englishmen and Frenchmen in distress were re- 

 freshed in 1583 and 1598 respectively. Unlike the French 

 and English, but like the Spaniards, they were never backed 



1 C. Fernandez Duro, Disquisitiones Naiiticas, Lib. VI, Area de Noe, 



PP- 2 95, 3 T 4> 3i5- 



- Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. viii, p. 82. 



