The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08: The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08: The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation
World history
Meantime the Bretons and Normans, and the Basques of France and Spain,
and the Portuguese grasped that which England practically abandoned. That
landfall which Cabot gave her in 1497 cost much blood and treasure to win
back in 1758. The French fishermen were on the coast as early as 1504,
and the names on La Cosa's map were displaced by French names still
surviving on the south coast and on what is called the "French shore" of
Newfoundland. Robert Thorne in 1527--and no doubt others unrecorded--in
vain urged upon the English government to vindicate its right. According
to the papal bulls and the treaty of Tordesillas, the new lands were
Portuguese east of a meridian three hundred seventy leagues west of
the Cape de Verd Islands and Spanish to the west of it. Baccalaos and
Labrador were considered to be Portuguese; and, upon the maps, when any
mention is made of English discoveries they are accordingly relegated to
Greenland or the far north of Labrador. The whole claim of England went
by abandonment and default. The Portuguese, as the Rev. Dr. Patterson has
shown, named all the east coast of Newfoundland, and their traces are
even yet found on the coasts of Nova Scotia and of Cape Breton.
Therefore it is that the maps we have now to refer to are not so much
Spanish as Portuguese. They will tell us nothing of the English, nor of
Cabot, but we shall be able to follow his island of St. John--the only
one of his names which survived. The outlines of some very early maps are
given by Kunstmann, Kretschmer, and Winsor, but until 1505 they have
no bearing upon our problem. In that year Reinel's map was made, and,
although Newfoundland forms part of _terra firma_, the openings north
and south of it are plainly indicated by unclosed lines. Cape Race has
received its permanent name, "_Raso_" and, although only the east coast
of Newfoundland is named, there is no possibility of mistaking the
easternmost point of Cape Breton. Just opposite _(ex adverso_) is laid
down and named the island of Sam Joha, in latitude 46°, the precise
latitude of Scatari Island. Here, then, in 1505, is in this island of
St. John an independent testimony to the landfall of 1497--not off Cape
North, which does not yet appear, nor inside the gulf, for it is not even
indicated--but in the Atlantic Ocean, at the cape of Cape Breton--the
"Cavo descubierto" of La Cosa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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