Italian navigator, a man of great intrepidity, courage, and nautical
skill, discovered Newfoundland, saw Labrador, (only previously known to
the Danes) and entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. To Labrador he gave,
it is alleged, the name of Primavista. But that he so designated that
still rugged and inhospitable, but not unimprovable, region, is less
than probable. The name was more applicable to the gulf which,
doubtless, appeared to Cabot to be a first glimpse of the grand marine
highway of which he was in quest, and with which he was so content that
he returned to England and was knighted by Henry the Seventh. Sebastian
Cabot made the next attempt to reach China by sailing northwest. He
penetrated to Hudson's Bay, never even got a glimpse of the St.
Lawrence, and returned to England. Fifty years afterwards, Cotereal
left Portugal, with the view of following the course of the elder
Cabot. He reached Labrador, returned to Portugal, was lost on a second
voyage, and was the first subject of a "searching expedition," three
vessels having been fitted out with that view by the King of Portugal.
Several other attempts at discovery were subsequently made. Two
merchants of Bristol, in England, obtained a patent to establish
colonies in Newfoundland and Labrador, and in 1527, Henry the Seventh,
for the last time, despatched a northwest passage discovery fleet. The
formation of English settlements, and the exploration were equally
unsuccessful. These facts I allude to, rather with the object of
accounting for the name of "Canada," applied to the country through
which the St. Lawrence flows, than for any other purpose. In the
"_Relations des Jesuits_," Father Henepin states that the Spaniards
first discovered Canada while in search, not of a northwest passage,
but of gold, which they could not find, and therefore called the land,
so valueless in their eyes, _El Capo di Nada_--"The Cape of Nothing."
But, the Spaniards, who possibly did visit Canada two years before
Cabot, whatever the object of their voyage may have been, could not
have done anything so absurd. Quebec, not Canada, may have been to them
Cape Nothing, and doubtless was. It was the _way_ they looked for. That
was as visible to them as to Cabot, and a passage, strath, or way is
signified in Spanish by the word Canada. It was not gold but a way to
gold that English, Spaniards, Italians, and French sought. It was the
cashmeres, the pearls, and the gold of India that were wan