FISHERIES OP THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC 19 



Robertson could not have known where Brest was actually 

 located; for he confuses it with Bradore Bay, which is 25 to 

 30 miles further east. 



The story of Brest attributed in the Lyons publication 

 to ' ' Sieur de Combes, ' ' who is not known at all outside of the 

 title of this letter, has been effectually disposed of by both 

 Dr. S. E. Dawson * and Mr. W. S. Wallace. 2 



We have already seen that after the Basques came the 

 Portuguese to the waters of the Gulf, following the course 

 taken in 1500 by the brothers Cortereal, while in 1535 the 

 voyage of Estevan Gomez showed the way to the fisheries 

 to his Spanish fellow-countrymen. What is now Bradore 

 Bay was long known as Baie des Espagnols, and in 1704 there 

 were still to be seen there the ruins of a Spanish fishing es- 

 tablishment. 3 Jacques Cartier, in the description of his first 

 voyage to Canada in 1534, tells of the sedentary fisheries of 

 the Micmac Indians in the Baie des Chaleurs, and even de- 

 scribes the hempen nets which they employed and the largo 

 quantity of mackerel which they took in them near the shore. 



JACQUES CARTIER ON THE FISHERIES OF THE 

 ST. LAWRENCE. 



In the following year we have his description of the 

 fishes of the St. Lawrence, as follows : 



''As has been mentioned in previous chapters, fish of all 

 the kinds ever heard of abound in the river; for, from its 

 mouth up to its end (i.e., as far as they went), in proper 

 season will be found nearly all kinds of salt and fresh water 

 fish; also will be found in Canada large numbers of whales, 



1 Brest on the Canadian Labrador. By Samuel Edward Daw- 

 son, Litt. D. (Laval), in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of 

 Canada, Second Series, Vol. XI. 



2 Historical introduction by W. S. Wallace to Labrador, the 

 Country and the People, by Wilfrid T. Grenfell, C. M. G., M.D., and 

 others, New York, 1910. 



3 W. S. Wallace in his Historical Introduction to Labrador, 

 the Country and the People, p. 14. 



