262 
Butler—The Codfish in American History. 
reached the banks of Newfoundland even before the voyages of 
Columbus and Cabot. It is certain that within a few years 
after those voyages the Bretons began there a lucrative cod- 
fishery which they have carried on to this day. When France 
was expelled every where from the American main she clung 
tenaciously to three fishing islands,— St. Pierre, and the two 
Miquelons — as invaluable for her cod-fishery. She retains them 
now a century after losing almost all her West Indian territory. 
It is argued with much show of reason that but for cod-fish 
the Puritans would never have set their faces toward New Eng¬ 
land. We talk of Plymouth rock as its chief corner stone, but 
in the lowest deep behold a lower deep. Bartholomew G-osnold 
who in 1602 discovered Cape Cod, so named it from the fish 
that abounded there, and he thus furnished a descriptive name 
for the chart of Capt. John Smith. Smith’s map was in the 
hands of the Pilgrims in their temporary Holland sojourn. They 
tell us that after hesitations whither to emigrate they resolved 
to go where fishing was best. The name James had on that map 
supplanted the cod of G-osnold but it was known to be given 
for currying royal favor, and reminded men all the more of the 
60,000 cod which Smith had taken there. From the first it was 
foreseen that the cape could never lose the name G-osnold had 
given “ till shoals of cod w T ere seen swimming upon the top of 
its highest hills. ” There was talk of Guiana and Manhattan 
but, as Governor Bradford chronicles, “the major part inclined 
to go to Plymouth, chiefly for the hope of present profit to be 
made by the fish that was found in that country. ” They had 
heard that fishers from the west of England had made money on 
the Banks, and they trusted by planting themselves on a nearer 
base to make more. When their agents at the court of King 
James were asked by him what gainful business they could fol¬ 
low on the land-grant they sought for, their answer was the 
single word, — fishing! The soil at Plymouth yielded no crops 
till it had been fertilized by a fish thrown on every hill of corn. 
Had the first-comers been provided with hooks or nets for 
catching cod, their first winter would have been exempt from 
famine. DeRasieres,— the first visitor from Dutch Manhattan, 
wrote within seven years of the original landing: “The bay is 
