The errors, disasters, and failures of his predecessors will throw out in stronger relief the sound common sense and sagacity, the determined courage and unfaltering resolution, and the prudent wariness, which enabled Champlain to note and avoid their errors, to meet and to overcome difficulties, to foresee and to prepare for possible evil contingencies. It is certain that the French were among the first, if not the very first, who followed in the track, and profited by the discovery, of Cabot. The Basques, Bretons, and Normans, as early as 1504, practised the cod fishery along the coast and on the Great Bank of Newfoundland[2]--the ancestors, probably, of the Basques and Bretons who, a century later, so stoutly resisted the pretensions of the companies which were then forming, to the exclusive privilege of the fishery and trade in those parts. [2] The Père Fournier, in his _Hydrographie_, says that the Basques and Bretons had been there before 1504: "L'an 1504, ainsi qu'il est porté dans l'histoire de Niflet, et dans Magin, les Basques, Normands, et Bretons allèrent en la coste des Moreïes, dit le Grand banc, vers le Cap Breton; voire, il semble qu'ils y ayent esté bien auparavant, car dans une lettre écrite par Sebastian Cavot à Henry VII, Roy d'Angleterre, l'an 1497, ces terres sont appelées du nom d'Isles de Bacaleos, comme d'un nom assez connu. On ne peut douter que ce nom ne leur ait este donné par les Basques, qui seuls en Europe appellent ce poisson Bacaleos, ou Bacallos: et les originaires l'appellent Apagé."--Lib. vi, c. 12, Paris, 1643. Others say that Juan Vaz de Cortereal explored the northern seas and discovered the land of _Baccalhos_, or Codfishland, in 1463, either of which, if true, accounts for Cabot's mentioning the name as familiar, but overthrows his claim to its discovery.... Champlain also writes: "Ce furent les Bretons et les Normands qui en l'an 1504 descouvrirent, _les premiers des Chréstiens_, le Grand Banc des Moluques (Molues or Morues) et les Isles de Terre Neufve, ainsi qu'il se remarque és histoires de Niflet et d'Antoine Maginus."--_Voyages de la Nouvelle France_, Paris, 1632. In 1506, Jean Denys, of Harfleur, published a map of the newly known country, and, two years after, a pilot of Dieppe, named Thomas Aubert, commanding a vessel named the "Pensée," belonging to Jean Ange, father of the celebrated Vicomte de Dieppe, brought a North American Indian with him to France.[3] [3] Navarrete and Ramusio.