INTR OD UCTION 9 



on the Labrador, named possibly after the chaplain of 

 Corte-ReaFs ships. 



In one of the inlets of Labrador Corte-Real came upon 

 a band of Nasquapee Indians, a tribe which still inhabits 

 that neighbourhood. The African slave-trade, which was 

 carried on principally from Lisbon, had taught the Portu- 

 guese to look upon all natives as fair spoil ; and the sailors 

 kidnapped some sixty of the Indians, and stowed them 

 away below hatches. Two of the three ships were sent 

 back to Lisbon with the Indians on board; they arrived 

 there in little more than a month, and their arrival created 

 the greatest excitement. King Manoel was delighted. 

 Not only did the Indians promise to prove excellent slaves, 

 all the more valuable since the African negro had become 

 so wary that his capture was a matter of difficulty, but the 

 new country produced, also, timber in abundance, which 

 could be brought to Portugal at the cost of a month's 

 voyage. 



This slave-hunting episode has been fixed on by some 

 historians as affording the true explanation of the name 

 Terra Labrador, or Terra del Laboratore. King Manoel 

 had expressed the opinion that the new slaves would be 

 "excellent for labour"; obviously "Terra del Labora- 

 tore" meant "labourers' coast," or, as we might say, "slave 

 coast." Unfortunately, there are difficulties about this 

 ingenious theory. In the first place, the words del Lab- 

 oratore are in the singular; in the second place, the Por- 

 tuguese word llavrador does not mean a labourer, but 

 something like a yeoman farmer; and in the third place, 

 the original Labrador was not what we know now as Lab- 

 rador it was Greenland. In nearly all the maps of the 



