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have been superseded.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 
