INTRODUCTION 13 



century Iceland was the scene of the most extensive 

 fisheries. In 1497, however, John Cabot came back from 

 "the new-found isle" with glowing accounts of the cod- 

 fish which abounded there. Sebastian Cabot, who had a 

 vivid imagination, vowed that the shoals of codfish were 

 so numerous " they sum tymes stayed his shippes." En- 

 terprising fishermen almost immediately set out for the 

 new fishing-grounds. They appear in the records for the 

 first time in 1504, the year after the last voyage of the 

 Corte-Reals. At first they seem to have come mainly 

 from Breton and Norman ports. When Queen Joanna of 

 Spain, in 1511, wanted pilots for the Bacallaos (New- 

 foundland), she went to Brittany for them. And in 1534, 

 when Jacques Cartier was passing through the Strait of 

 Belle Isle, he met a fishing vessel from La Rochelle looking 

 for the harbour of " Brest." This was a harbour near the 

 mouth of the Eskimo River, which had obviously been 

 named by Breton fishermen; it was already, apparently, 

 a rendezvous. 



Contemporaneously with the French fishermen, came 

 the Basque whalers from the Bay of Biscay. The asser- 

 tion has even been made that, in their whaling voyages 

 in the north Atlantic, the Basques discovered and fished 

 at Labrador as early as 1470 ; but this story may be safely 

 discounted. What is certain is that from 1525 to about 

 1700 they frequented the Strait of Belle Isle and the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence in considerable numbers. As they soon 

 discovered, the whales followed down the cold Labrador 

 current and passed through the Strait into the Gulf in 

 great abundance. 



Portuguese fishermen followed in the track of the Corte- 



