28 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



St. Lawrence, at the foot of the promontory between Fortune 

 and Placentia Bays (1597); then St. Pierre Island (1594); 

 then Placentia Bay, where the big Basque fleet assembled 

 in 1594, and lastly Cape St. Mary, which divides Placentia 

 from St. Mary's Bay ; and at all these stations no other ships 

 except Basque or French ships were seen. This unwilling 

 evidence by three or four isolated Englishmen as to French 

 predominance on the south coast, and more especially in 

 Placentia Bay, is only less remarkable than their eloquent 

 silence as to the existence of any single Englishman in those 

 parts. French influence was all in all on the south coast of 

 Newfoundland, in the Magdalens, and St. Pierre, and on the 

 west coast of Cape Breton Island ; and the Spaniards, who 

 were there, only sheltered themselves under the wing of their 

 relations from the other side of the border. 



Bretons, The French ships concentrated not only in Placentia Bay, 

 ^'' ' c '" s on the south coast of Newfoundland, but also at Brest, on the 



at hrest 



ami in Labrador coast of Belle Isle Strait, which was described by 

 Petit Nord, L ewes Roberts as ' the chief town ' of Labrador, 1 but it was 

 only a rendezvous for French fleets on their way to Canada, 

 and for French fishermen, who, during the seventeenth century, 

 sailed thence down the east coast of Newfoundland as far as 

 White Bay, and down the west coast as far as the Bay of 

 Islands, 2 and called the land along which they coasted ' Le 

 Petit Nord '. True, twelve (French ?) boats helped J. Knight's 

 comrades near Fogo Island (1606); and Port a Port, which 

 lies between the Bay of Islands and St. George Bay, was 

 discovered long before 1650; but a casual glance at maps, 

 which were drawn before 1768, proves that very little can have 

 been known by the fishermen of Belle Isle Strait of what lay 

 between White Bay and Fogo on the east coast, or between 

 the Bay of Islands and St. George Bay on the west coast. 



1 Merchants Mappe of Commerce, 1638, ed. 1700, cli. xii, p. 54, 

 misquoted by Prowse, Baxter, Robertson, Hind, &c. 



2 ' Tres ilhas.' 



