22 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



French 

 seekers 

 after Asia 

 tried to 

 found 

 Canada, 



which de- 

 sign en- 

 croached 

 upon N'ew- 

 fotmdland, 

 \c,1\etseq.. 



proved the truth of Davys's motto that ' no sea is unnavig- 

 able,* had nothing to do with Asiatic or any other trade 

 or industry or colonization, and belong not to history but to 

 geography. 



France, meanwhile, had entered the arena. Verrazzano, 

 a Florentine who had been in Cairo, resolved to find 

 a western way to Cathay, and played in France the part 

 which John Cabot had played in England. In 1524 he 

 cruised along America northward from North Carolina,* 

 and annexed to France the territory which lay between New 

 Spain and Newfoundland, and which was thenceforth called 

 Norumbega or New France. He seemed to think that 

 a western way would be found at or near the Hudson.' 

 One map (1527) represented New France as extending from 

 Florida* to New Hampshire,^ another confined it to the 

 country between the Hudson and St. Lawrence. There was 

 most admired disorder, which Sebastian Cabot did not 

 diminish, when he declared that in his famous (or fabulous) 

 voyage of discovery (1498) he annexed to England all the 

 coast between the latitude of the Chesapeake ^ and the Arctic 

 Circle. Portuguese claims to the New Land of the 

 Cortereals or of Bacalhaos were flaunted by angry geo- 

 graphers, Spain showed that Florida might mean almost 

 anything, and Labrador, Newfoundland, the land of Corte- 

 real, Bacalhaos, Norumbega, New France, Florida, and New 

 Spain chased one another across the map, as shadows chase 

 one another across the earth on a day of mingled sunshine 

 and cloud in spring. 



France followed up Verrazzano's expedition by sending 

 Jacques Cartier (1534) to seek Cathay by way of the St. 

 Lawrence. His landfall (1534) was Cape Bonavista in 

 Newfoundland, whence he steered north, and passed through 

 Belle Isle Strait, from Quirpon to Blanc Sablon and Brest — 



1 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations^ vol. vii, pp. 249, 252. 



2 Lat. 34°. 3 Lat. 40°. " Lat. 27°. 

 » Lat. 43°. « Lat. 38°. 



