THE CODFISH FRONTIER 257 



rienced navigators and explorers as Solis and Pinzon, the com- 

 panion of Columbus on his second voyage. These three seem 

 to have cruised along the coast as far north as the Chesapeake 

 and then returned east by way of Bermuda. 



In 1 500 Jean de La Cosa, one of the best pilots and cartog- 

 raphers of his time, and pilot for Columbus on his first and 

 second voyages, made a map of the northeast coasts based on 

 reports of Cabot's discoveries. It is a little vague, as it had to 

 be, but it gives what probably was the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 and parts of Newfoundland. The neighborhood is labeled 

 ''Sea Discovered by the Englishmen." It indicates that the 

 Cabot voyages may have extended from Labrador to Cape 

 Cod; it also indicates that any accurate knowledge of these 

 coasts did not yet exist. Men were still often unable to distin- 

 guish between islands and promontories, or whether a large 

 bay might not be the long-desired passage to the Indies. 



Cabot and his Bristol men were the first to prove they had 

 been to the Grand Banks. They reported the cod there so 

 plentiful that they could be hauled out of the sea in baskets; 

 but the English were slow to take advantage of this good news. 

 It might be used as a persuasive argument for prior knowledge 

 that the Norman, Breton, and Basque fishing fleets established 

 themselves on the Banks by 1504, when there was report of 

 only a single English vessel there. Two years later Jean Denys 

 of Honfleur cruised through these same waters, and further 

 extended the mapping of the St. Lawrence Gulf. In 1521 

 Alvarez Fagundes made a more careful exploration of the 

 St. Lawrence region for the King of Portugal, but the Portu- 

 guese were so involved in the exploitation of their new wealth 

 in the Far East that they did not push the matter. 



Francis I of France was not content to let the Spanish and 

 Portuguese have the Pope of Rome divide the world between 

 them; he ironically pointed out that he also was a direct heir 

 of Adam. The King at this time — about 1520 — was much 



