20 (p. 141).--Sable Island is thus described by Champlain, _Voyages_, (Prince Soc.), ii., p. 8: "This island is thirty leagues distant north and south from Cape Breton, and in length is about fifteen leagues. It contains a small lake. The island is very sandy, and there are no trees at all of considerable size, only copse and herbage, which serve as pasturage for the bullocks and cows which the Portuguese carried there more than sixty years ago." The origin of the cattle here mentioned is thus explained by Edward Haies, in his report on Sir Humphrey Gilbert's voyage of 1583, in Goldsmid's _Hakluyt_, vol. xii., p. 345: "Sablon lieth to the seaward of Cape Briton about 25 leagues, whither we were determined to goe vpon intelligence we had of a Portugal--who was himselfe present when the Portugals (abotte thirty yeeres past) did put in the same Island both Neat and Swine to breede, which were since exceedingly multiplied." Lescarbot, however, says the cattle were landed there about 1528, by Baron de Léry; see his _Nouv. France_, p. 22. Sable Island is noted as the scene of La Roche's unfortunate attempt at colonization in 1598, for a graphic description of which see Parkman's _Pioneers_, pp. 231-235. See Dionne's note on "Les Sablons," in his _Nouvelle France_ (Quebec, 1891), pp. 311-316. 21 (p. 141).--The name Bacallaos (see vol. i., _note_ 7) was long given to the region afterwards known as Canada. Peter Martyr says: "Sebastian Cabot him selfe, named those lands _Baccallaos_ bycause that in the seas thereabout he founde so great multitudes of certeyne bigge fysshes much like vnto tunies (which th[e] inhabitantes caule Baccallaos) that they sumtymes stayed his shippes."--See Eden's _Three English Books on America_ (Arber ed., Birmingham, 1885), pp. 161, 345. Fournier's _Hydrographie_ (Paris, 1667), cited in Browne's _History of Cape Breton_ (London, 1869), p. 13, says: "It cannot be doubted this name was given by the Basques, who alone in Europe call that fish Bacalaos, or Bacaleos; the aborigines term them Apagé." See also Lescarbot's _Nouv. France_, p. 237; and Dionne's _Nouv. France_, pp. 327-331. Cf. Prowse (_Hist. N. F._, p. 589); he says, in claiming the discovery of Newfoundland for the English, that _Baccalao_ was but "an ordinary trade word, in use at that period." For an interesting sketch of the Basque fisheries in Newfoundland, up to the end of the 17th century, see Prowse, _ut supra_, pp. 47-49.