scream of the gulls and the moan of the restless water-fret along endless
white reefs.  Not a living soul did the English sailors see.  Weak in
numbers, disappointed in the rocky land, they did not wait to hunt for
natives.  An English flag was hastily unfurled and possession taken of
this Empire of the North for England.  The woods of America for the first
time rang to the chopper.  Wood and water were taken on, and the
_Matthew_ had anchored in Bristol by the first week of August.  Neither
gold nor a way to China had Cabot found; but he had accomplished three
things: he had found that the New World was not a part of Asia, as Spain
thought; he had found the continent itself; and he had given England the
right to claim new dominion.

[Illustration: A TYPICAL "HOLE IN THE WALL" AT "KITTY VIDDY," NEAR ST.
JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND]

England went mad over Cabot.  He was granted the title of admiral and
allowed to dress in silks as a nobleman.  King Henry gave him 10 pounds,
equal to $500 of modern money, and a pension of 20 pounds, equal to $1000
to-day.  It is sometimes said that modern writers attribute an air of
romance to these old pathfinders, {5} which they would have scorned; but
"Zuan Cabot," as the people called him, wore the halo of glory with glee.
To his barber he presented an island kingdom; to a poor monk he gave a
bishopric.  His son, Sebastian, sailed out the next year with a fleet of
six ships and three hundred men, coasting north as far as Greenland,
south as far as Carolina, so rendering doubly secure England's title to
the North, and bringing back news of the great cod banks that were to
lure French and Spanish and English fishermen to Newfoundland for
hundreds of years.

[Illustration: SEBASTIAN CABOT]

Where was Cabot's landfall?

I chanced to be in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland, shortly after the 400th
anniversary of Cabot's voyage.  King's Cove, landlocked as a hole in a
wall, mountains meeting sky line, presented on one flat rock in letters
the size of a house claim that it was _here_ John Cabot sent his sailors
ashore to plant the flag on cairn of bowlders; but when I came back from
Newfoundland by way of Cape Breton, I found the same claim there.  For
generations the tradition has been handed down from father to son among
Newfoundland fisher folk that as Cabot's vessel, pitching and rolling to
the tidal bore, came scudding into King's Cove, rock girt as an inland
lake, the sailors shouted "Bona Vista--Beautiful View"; but Cape Breton
has her legend, too.  It was Cabot's report of the cod banks that brought
the Breton fishermen out, whose name Cape Breton bears.

{6} As Christopher Columbus spurred England to action, so Cabot now
spurred Portugal and Spain and France.

Gaspar Cortereal comes in 1500 from Portugal on Cabot's tracks to that
land of "slaty rocks" which the Norse saw long ago.  The Gulf Stream
beats the iron coast with a boom of thunder, and the tide swirl meets the
ice drift; and it isn't a land to make a treasure hunter happy till there
wander down to the shore Montaignais Indians, strapping fellows, a head
taller than the tallest Portuguese.  Cortereal lands, lures fifty savages
on board, carries them home as slaves for Portugal's galley ships, and
names the country--"land of laborers"--Labrador.  He sailed again, the
next year; but never returned to Portugal.  The seas swallowed his
vessel; or the tide beat it to pieces against Labrador's rocks; of those
Indians slaked their vengeance by cutting the throats of master and crew.

And Spain was not idle.  In 1513 Balboa leads his Spanish treasure
seekers across the Isthmus of Panama, discovers the Pacific, and realizes
what Cabot has already proved--that the New World is not a part of Asia.
Thereupon, in swelling words, he takes possession of "earth, air, and
water from the Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic" for Spain.  A few years
later Magellan finds his way to Asia round South America; but this path
by sea is too long.

From France, Normans and Bretons are following Cabot's tracks to
Newfoundland, to Labrador, to Cape Breton, "quhar men goeth a-fishing" in
little cockleshell boats no bigger than three-masted schooner, with
black-painted dories dragging in tow or roped on the rolling decks.
Absurd it is, but with no blare of trumpets or royal commissions, with no
guide but the wander spirit that lured the old Vikings over the rolling
seas, these grizzled peasants flock from France, cross the Atlantic, and
scatter over what were then chartless waters from the Gulf of St.
Lawrence to the Grand Banks.

Just as they may be seen to-day bounding over the waves in their little
black dories, hauling in . . . hauling in the endless line, or jigging
for squid, or lying at ease at the noonday hour {7} singing some old land
ballad while the kettle of cod and pork boils above a chip fire kindled
on the stones used as ballast in their boats--so came the French fisher
folk three years after Cabot had discovered the Grand Banks.  Denys of
Honfleur has led his fishing fleet all over the Gulf of St. Lawrence by
1506.  So has Aubert of Dieppe.  By 1517, fifty French vessels yearly
fish off the coast of New-Found-Land.  By 1518 one Baron de Lery has
formed the project of colonizing this new domain; but the baron's ship
unluckily came from the Grand Banks to port on that circular bank of sand
known as Sable Island--from twenty to thirty miles as the tide shifts the
sand, with grass waist high and a swampy lake in the middle.  The Baron
de Lery unloads his stock on Sable island and roves the sea for a better
port.

The King of France, meanwhile, resents the Pope dividing the New World
between Spain and Portugal.  "I should like to see the clause in Father
Adam's will that gives the whole earth to you," he sent word to his
brother kings.  Verrazano, sea rover of Florence, is commissioned to
explore the New World seas; but Verrazano goes no farther north in 1524