THE CODFISH FRONTIER 253 



in 1491 and 1492 Bristol merchants outfitted ships to make 

 the same search. These were commercial men, not idle 

 dreamers, and they very likely had some circumstantial evi- 

 dence to warrant the expense. It is said that the father of the 

 two Corte-reals, Joao Vas, as early as 1465 on a voyage from 

 Terciera in the Azores discovered the Baccalaos shores. All 

 these early voyagers, including Cabot and the brothers Corte- 

 real in 1 500, first made landfall at Greenland and then stood 

 west and south as the Norse had done some centuries before. 

 And they were all a little vague about just what these new 

 lands were, most of them believing that they had come on a 

 continent that was one with Asia and the realm of the Grand 

 Khan. So persistent was the dream of Columbus. 



As far as we know for certain, the first after the Norse to 

 open up the Codfish Frontier was Giovanni Caboto, a Genoese 

 working for the English. He was immediately followed by the 

 Portuguese. But shortly after these voyages at the close of the 

 fifteenth century, the codfish fleet that had long worked the 

 waters around and west of Iceland was well established off the 

 Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The fishermen did not wait 

 for government grants to get started, and they came from all 

 the eastern Atlantic countries — from Bristol, from the French 

 ports of Normandy and Brittany, and in the south from the 

 Basque country and the Portuguese ports. The fleet was inter- 

 national. It held together for a while in more or less peaceful 

 enterprise and mutual help, in spite of shifting allegiances and 

 troubles fomented by the home governments. 



But once the undersea wealth of the Newfoundland fishing 

 grounds became established in Europe for a population in 

 great need of fish, the efforts of the various governments to 

 explore and stake a claim to the American Atlantic seaboard 

 accelerated during the sixteenth century. The professional 

 explorers and pilots began to take over, and men of many 

 nations sailed the waters of the Ocean Stream — for the most 



