covered to those rich regions
was to linger for nearly two centuries in the minds of maritime
adventurers and geographers.

[Illustration: Sketch of Juan de la Cosa's map, A.D. 1500.]

If we study the names of the headlands, bays, and other natural
features of the islands and countries which inclose the Gulf of St.
Lawrence we find many memorials of the early Portuguese and French
voyagers. In the beginning of the sixteenth century Gaspar Cortereal
made several voyages to the northeastern shores of Newfoundland and
Labrador, and brought back with him a number of natives whose sturdy
frames gave European spectators the idea that they would make good
labourers; and it was this erroneous conception, it is generally
thought, gave its present name to the rocky, forbidding region which
the Norse voyagers had probably called Helluland five hundred years
before. Both Gaspar Cortereal and his brother Miguel disappeared from
history somewhere in the waters of Hudson's {26} Bay or Labrador; but
they were followed by other adventurous sailors who have left mementos
of their nationality on such places as Cape Raso (Race), Boa Ventura
(Bonaventure), Conception, Tangier, Porto Novo, Carbonear (Carboneiro),
all of which and other names appear on the earliest maps of the
north-eastern waters of North America.

Some enterprising sailors of Brittany first gave a name to that Cape
which lies to the northeast of the historic port of Louisbourg. These
hardy sailors were certainly on the coast of the island as early as
1504, and Cape Breton is consequently the earliest French name on
record in America. Some claim is made for the Basques--that primeval
people, whose origin is lost in the mists of tradition--because there
is a Cape Breton on the Biscayan coast of France, but the evidence in
support of the Bretons' claim is by far the strongest. For very many
years the name of Bretons' land was attached on maps to a continental
region, which included the present Nova Scotia, and it was well into
the middle of the sixteenth century, after the voyages of Jacques
Cartier and Jehan Alfonce, before we find the island itself make its
appearance in its proper place and form.

It was a native of the beautiful city of Florence, in the days of
Francis the First, who gave to France some claim to territory in North
America. Giovanni da Verrazano, a well-known corsair, in 1524,
received a commission from that brilliant and dissipated king, Francis