MISCELLANEOUS. 



1157 



on the Mississippi, the limitless regions penetrated by the St. Law- 

 rence Acadia, from Canseau, in Nova Scotia, to the Kennebeck river, 

 in Maine ; the island of Cape Breton ; and the hundred other isles of the 

 bays of the northern and eastern possessions. 



French cod-fishery. 



COD-FISHERY OF SPAIN. 



Participating in the excitement which prevailed in Europe on the 

 discovery in the American seas of varieties of fish not previously 

 known or used in the fasts of the Roman church, Spain was an early 

 competitor with France and England. Vessels of her flag were 

 certainly at Newfoundland as soon as the year 1517. Sixty years 

 later, the number of her vessels employed in the fishery there is 

 estimated at one hundred. The number rapidly diminished. Syl- 

 vester Wyat, of Bristol, England, who made a voyage to the St. 

 Lawrence and Newfoundland in 1593, found only eight Spanish 

 ships in a fleet of upwards of eighty sail of French and English vessels. 

 From the remarks of Smith who became the father of Virginia it 

 would seem that in the early part of the seventeenth century, the 

 Spanish fishery was pursued with greater vigor than at the time last 

 mentioned. But the greater wealth to be acquired in the gold 

 regions of South America soon lured the Spaniards from an avocation 

 of so great toil, and of so uncertain rewards. No controversy between 

 Spain and England as to their respective rights to the fishing grounds, 

 ever arose. 



Spain retired from pur waters in peace, and at her own pleasure. 

 Little is heard of her in connextion with our subject for quite a cen- 

 tury, and until the peace of 1763. Her claim resting on discovery 

 ever vague and uncertain at the north, had become almost as obso- 



