If evidence were wanted that, in the oldest days of movement from Europe to the West, southern sailors did not go only to tropical America, it would be found in the naming of the North American coasts and islands. The first point on the coast of North America, sighted by the first discoverer--the Italian Cabot--was spoken of under the Italian name of Prima Terra Vista. The name Baccalaos[24] tells of voyages of the Basques, as Cape Breton of visitors from Brittany; and, {17} after Corte Real's voyages, the east coast of Newfoundland was, as old maps testify, christened for a while Terra de Corte Reall.[25] Soon, however, the Spaniards found Mexico, Peru, and Central America enough and more than enough to absorb their whole attention; the Portuguese were over-weighted by their eastern empire and Brazil: and North America was given over, first to be explored and then to be settled, by the peoples of the north of Europe; who gathered strength as their southern rivals declined, and whose work was more lasting because more slow. [Footnote 24: 'Baccalaos' is the Spanish name for codfish. It is of Basque origin. Cabot, it is stated, gave the name generally to the lands which he found. The name was subsequently applied more especially to Newfoundland. Thus Edward Hayes in his account of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's last voyage, under the heading 'a brief relation of the Newfoundland and the commodities thereof' (Hakluyt, iii, 193), speaks of 'that which we do call the Newfoundland and the Frenchmen Bacalaos.' Various small islands, however, in these parts were also given this name by different writers. At the present day, on the maps of Newfoundland, an islet off the east coast, at the extreme north of the peninsula of Avalon, bears the name of Baccalieu. See Parkman, p. 189 note as above, and the chapter on the voyages of the Cabots in Justin Winsor's history, vol. iii.]