fishermen, who went to Newfoundland for its own sake, in order to
catch fish for the European market, who were without illusions or
ideas or any wish to settle, and who belonged to many nations, and
thwarted but also paved the way for more serious colonizers. Thirdly,
there were idealists who wished to colonize for colonization's sake
and to make England great; but in order to make England great they
thought it necessary to humble Spain in the dust, and their ideas were
destructive as well as creative. All these colonizers had their
special projects, and each project, being inspired by imperfect
ideals, failed more or less, or changed its character from time to
time. The first and third projects were at one time guided by the same
hand; but the first project gradually cast off its colonizing slough,
and resolved itself once more into discovery for discovery's sake; and
the third project ceased to be a plan of campaign, and resolved itself
into sober and peaceful schemes for settling in the land. Even the
second project, which was unled, uninspired, unnational, and almost
unconscious, and which began and continued as though in obedience to
some irresistible and unchangeable natural and economic law, assumed
different shapes and semblances, as it blended or refused to blend
with the patriotic projects of the idealists. These three types of
colonization..., though they tended on different directions, ... were
hardly distinguishable in the earlier phases of their history. Perhaps
a fourth type should be added, but this fourth type was what
naturalists call an aberrant type, and only comprised two colonizers,
Rut and Hore, whose aims were indistinct, and who had no clear idea
where they meant to go, or what they meant to do when they got there."

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 co