INTRODUCTION 9 
on the Labrador, named possibly after the chaplain of 
Corte-Real’s 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 Jllavrador 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 
