10 LABRADOR 



first half of the sixteenth century Greenland is Labrador; 

 it was only owing to the fact that the early geographers 

 thought that Davis Strait was a gulf, and that the main- 

 land continued all the way, that the name got shifted 

 down to the northeast coast of North America. For many 

 years what is now known as Labrador was merely desig- 

 nated " Terra Cvrterialis." 



The real explanation is to be found in the Wolfenbiittel 

 map of 1534, which bears along the coast of Greenland 

 the legend: "Country of Labrador, which was discovered 

 by the English of the port of Bristol, and because he who 

 first gave notice of seeing it was a farmer (llavrador) from 

 the Azores, this name became attached to it." We have 

 even a suspicion as to who this llavradvr was. He was 

 probably one Joao Fernandes, who accompanied Cabot 

 on his second voyage, who was born on the same island 

 of the Azores as Gaspar Corte-Real, and who was probably 

 instrumental in 1500 in persuading Corte-Real to make 

 his first expedition. In 1499 he himself obtained letters 

 patent from King Manoel, but he does not seem to have 

 used them. 



On his third voyage, in 1502, Gaspar Corte-Real was 

 lost. His brother Miguel went in search of him, and he 

 too disappeared. No trace of the two brothers has ever 

 been found. They may have gone down in the broad 

 Atlantic, or they may have been lured to their fate by the 

 unforgetting Indians. They pass from history. 



For the next fifty years the exploration of Labrador 

 was at a standstill. So far as the contour of the coast is 

 concerned, the map of Salvat de Pilestrina (1503) is nearer 

 the truth than any map up to Mercator's great chart of 



