A Bristol ship[39] having first discovered North America, it might have been expected that the years succeeding Cabot's voyages would have been fruitful in English adventure to the West; but, as far as records show, little was done by Englishmen during the first half of the sixteenth century to open up the New World; and even Cartier's bold exploits roused little or no spirit of rivalry in Great Britain. Indeed, all through {25} this century no English voyager seems to have turned his mind to Canada and its river. The explorers went to the Arctic seas, the would-be colonizers to Newfoundland or Virginia. Between 1500 and 1550 two voyages alone have been actually chronicled, though passing reference is made to others. Of these two, the first was in 1527, when Albert de Prado, a canon of St. Paul's, sailed with two ships in search of the Indies, reaching Newfoundland and the North American coast. The second was in 1536, under a leader named Hore--a voyage of which a graphic account is given in Hakluyt. On the coast of Newfoundland the adventurers suffered the last extremes of starvation, until at length even cannibalism began among them; and the survivors owed their safety to the coming of a French ship, which they seized and in which they returned home. It is clear, however, that before the middle of the century the Newfoundland fisheries had become a recognized branch of English trade, for the traffic was safeguarded by two Acts of Parliament, one passed in 1540, in Henry VIII's reign, the other in 1548, in the reign of King Edward VI. The object of the second Act was to prohibit the exaction of any dues by way of licence from men engaged in the Iceland or Newfoundland fishing trade, and Hakluyt's note upon it is that 'by this Act it appeareth that the trade out of England to Newfoundland was common and frequented about the beginning of the reign of Edward VI, namely, in the year 1548.'[40] [Footnote 39: For this passage, see Doyle's _History of the English in America_, vol. i, chap. iv.] [Footnote 40: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 170.] [Sidenote: _Return of Sebastian Cabot to England._]