8 LABRADOR 



John Cabot probably regarded his expeditions as finan- 

 cial failures. He had set sail expecting to bring back 

 the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind; he had found only the 

 rock-bound coasts of North America. He had not even 

 been able to discover the passage to the country where 

 the spices grew. King Henry VII and the merchants of 

 Bristol withdrew from a venture that swallowed up so 

 much capital and offered such small profits; and shortly 

 afterwards John Cabot died. 



Others, however, were not long in following in his wake. 

 In the summer of, 1500 Gaspar Corte-Real, a Portuguese 

 gentleman from the island of Terceira in the Azores, set 

 sail from Lisbon for the coasts which Cabot had discovered. 

 On his first voyage Corte-Real explored only the coast of 

 Greenland. On his second, which was made the next 

 year, he came out at Labrador in about 58 of north lati- 

 tude. The coast here is 3000 feet high, and there is nothing 

 to the north but a barren, precipitous shore of the same 

 sort. Corte-Real therefore turned south, no doubt in hope 

 of reaching in that direction the land of spices. As he 

 followed the shore, he explored every bay and inlet. He 

 examined Hamilton Inlet as far up as the Narrows, and he 

 seems to have explored Hawke Bay and the Gilbert and 

 Alexis rivers. The Strait of Belle Isle, however, he mis- 

 took (as Cabot had done) for an ordinary inlet; it re- 

 mained for others to discover its real nature. He named 

 a number of bays and capes, but nearly all his names 

 have been superseded. Some have died out, and some 

 have been shifted by ignorant geographers down to the 

 Newfoundland coast. Cape Freels (Cabo de Frey Luis) 

 is an example of the latter class; originally it was a cape 



