After the first discovery of Newfoundland and the adjoining coast, English official interest in the island declined, and English traders were occupied for the time being with their intercourse with Iceland, whence they obtained all the codfish they had need of. The new field of exploration and enterprise was thus left for some twenty years to others. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Gaspar Cortereal, a brave Portuguese sailor, having obtained a commission from the King of Portugal, made two voyages (in 1500 and 1501) with the object of discovering a north-west passage to Asia, explored the coasts of Greenland, Labrador, and Newfoundland, and finally lost his life on the coast of Labrador (1501).[15] On the ground of these discoveries, reinforced by the title conferred by the bull of Alexander VI., the Portuguese asserted their claim to Newfoundland. Henceforward Portuguese fishermen began to share the dangers and profits of the cod fishery with the hardy folk of Normandy and Brittany, and with Spaniards and Basques, who had followed fast in the footsteps of the earliest discoverers. Hence we find that many names of places and the east coast of the island are corruptions of Portuguese words, whilst names on the south coast show a French or a Basque origin.[16] In a sense it is true that Newfoundland has owed everything to its fisheries, but it is unfortunately also true that a sharp dissidence between the interests of alien fisheries and the policy of local development did much to retard the days of permanent settlement. That the more southern races of Europe took a large part in the development of the fisheries was only natural, inasmuch as the principal markets for the dried and salted codfish were in the Catholic countries of Europe. Continuously from the beginning of the sixteenth century the opening of each season brought vessels of many nationalities to a harvest which sufficed for all. We cannot say that at this time any primacy was claimed for English vessels, but there is no reason to doubt that Englishmen soon played a conspicuous part in opening up the trade. By the time of Henry VIII. the Newfoundland industry was sufficiently well known to be included with the Scotch and Irish Fisheries in an exception clause to a statute which forbade the importation of foreign fish. This statute is sufficiently noteworthy as an economic curiosity to be set forth _in extenso_. "ACT 33 HENRY VIII., c. xi. "The Bill conceryning bying of fisshe upon the see.