INTRODUCTION 13 
century Iceland was the scene of the most extensive 
fisheries. In 1497; however, John Cabot came back from 
“the new-found isle” with glowing accounts of the cod- 
fish which abounded there. Sebastian Cabot, who had a 
vivid imagination, vowed that the shoals of codfish were 
so numerous “they sumtymes stayed his shippes.” En- 
terprising fishermen almost immediately set out for the 
new fishing-grounds. They appear in the records for the 
first time in 1504, the year after the last voyage of the 
Corte-Reals. At first they seem to have come mainly 
from Breton and Norman ports. When Queen Joanna of 
Spain, in 1511, wanted pilots for the Bacallaos (New- 
foundland), she went to Brittany for them. And in 1534, 
when Jacques Cartier was passing through the Strait of 
Belle Isle, he met a fishing vessel from La Rochelle looking 
for the harbour of “ Brest.”? This was a harbour near the 
mouth of the Eskimo River, which had obviously been 
named by Breton fishermen; it was already, apparently, 
a rendezvous. 
Contemporaneously with the French fishermen, came 
the Basque whalers from the Bay of Biscay. The asser- 
tion has even been made that, in their whaling voyages 
in the north Atlantic, the Basques discovered and fished 
at Labrador as early as 1470; but this story may be safely 
discounted. What is certain is that from 1525 to about 
1700 they frequented the Strait of Belle Isle and the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence in considerable numbers. As they soon 
discovered, the whales followed down the cold Labrador 
current and passed through the Strait into the Gulf in 
great abundance. 
Portuguese fishermen followed in the track of the Corte- 
