3

land had told Columbus of the existence of our Western Continent, and Cronau1 supposes this information to be the same which Las Casas attributes to two seamen of Santa Maria and Murcia, who, on a voyage to Ireland, had been driven by adverse winds far away to the Northwest. An ancient chronicle states that the daring sailors of St. John de Luz pursued the whales as far as the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the year 1373;' another, that a man from the kingdom of Navarre, named John de Echaide, had discovered on the American coast, probably on Newfoundland, a seaport to which his countrymen gave the name of Echaide's Haven. A fact worthy of notice is that in St. Marc's library of Venice we find a map drawn by Bianco in 1436, on which is reported an island whose location corresponds to that of Newfoundland and is called "Stocafixa." It is well known, says Duro," that the Cantabrians have records to prove their ante-Columbian voyages to America. It is known, indeed, that, as early as the thirteenth century, they chased the whales as far as the northern seas. Many probabilities in this regard, collected by Garibay and Henao, give us to understand that, before Columbus was born, the daring sailors of Biscay, without any claim to discovery or any cosmopolitan benefit, used to land on the northeastern coast of America and there to take in supplies of fresh water. As we have noticed before, Galvano writes that in the year 1153 American natives arrived in Lubeck, likely from the coast of "Baccalaos," another name for Newfoundland,-" which standeth in the same latitude that Germanie doth ;"

1 S. 145.

Kunstmann, S. 42.

'Navarrete, t. i. p. 51.

I.e., dried codfish.-Cronau,

S. 145, 146.

5

Boletín, t. xxi. p. 46.

6 Supra, vol. i. p. 169.

7 I.e., fresh codfish-from Newfoundland.

from which it appears that the eastern parts of North America were at the time well known all over Europe. It is not incredible, therefore, what the eminent scholar Harrisse pretends,-namely, that the Basques very probably visited American waters during the seventh century of our era.1

The "Terra de Bacallaos" or Newfoundland is also said by Cordeyro to have been discovered by John Vas Corterreal in the year 1463. This voyager was a Portuguese, and we know that in 1464, at his return, it is said, from northeastern America, he was appointed governor of the island Terceira, the chief island of the Azores; but the claim of João Corterreal rests on no positive document or information, and is subject to serious objections. We know that the father-in-law of the great cosmographer, Martin Behaim, Jost Von Hurter, Lord of Moerkerken and Harlebeke, was shortly after named feudal governor of the Flemish colony of Fayal, belonging to the same archipelago, where Behaim met and married his daughter in the year 1490, after a four years' sojourn on the island. In 1493 Behaim returned to the Azores and remained there twelve years. These facts are evidence that John Corterreal's voyage, if real, must have been known to the cosmographer, who could not have forgotten to enrich his famous globe, drawn at that time, with the important discovery so recently made. Yet the Terra de Bacallaos makes no appearance on his map. Von Humboldt, therefore, with the learned generally, rejects the claim of John Vas Corterreal.2

1 Notes on Columbus, ap. Cronau, S. 146; Navarrete, t. iii. p. 183, thinks that Terranova, with its fisheries of caballaos or cod, was not discovered before 1525, and that the Biscayans visited it only

afterwards. His authority is the evidence of various witnesses at a lawsuit in 1561: a weak authority.

2 Examen, t. i. p. 278; Cronau, S. 146; B. F. De Costa, Sailing Directions; Kretschmer, S. 244.

The identity of the names is our apology for making here a record of three more early voyages to the northwestern coasts of our continent. Two vessels, probably in the spring of 1500, were sent out from Portugal to find a northwestern passage to the Asiatic coast, but no journal or chart of the expedition being now in existence, little is known of its results. Touching at the Azores, Gaspar Corterreal, its captain, possibly following Cabot's charts, struck the coast of Newfoundland, and, sailing north, discovered a land, which he called "Terra Verde" or the Green Land, but is not Greenland, says von Humboldt. He was stopped by ice at a river, named by him "Rio Nevado" or Snow River, but whose location is unknown. Corterreal returned to Lisbon before the end of the year 1500. On May 15, 1501, he set sail again from Belem near Lisbon, with two or three vessels; he probably touched at a point of Newfoundland and coasted northward some six or seven hundred miles; yet, prevented by the ice, he did not reach the "Terra Verde" of the former voyage.

One of the vessels returned to bring the news of the captain's loss, and his brother, Miguel Corterreal, was despatched on the 10th of May, 1502, to search for him; but Miguel himself was never heard of afterwards.1

Another rediscovery of America, better authenticated than that of João Vas Corterreal, is the one to which we have alluded already,—namely, of John of Kolno in the year 1476. It is stated that, when this daring pilot had been appointed by the Danish king, Christian I., to renew the intercourse between Denmark and Greenland, he sailed past Norway, Iceland, and

LXXV.

1 H. H. Bancroft, Works, vol. vi.; notes belonging here, Document Central America, vol. i. pp. 114, 117; von Humboldt, Examen, t. iv. p. 222.-See a few interesting

2

Supra, p. 475.

Greenland itself, and never folded canvas until he had reached the American main-land, in particular Labrador and the more southern coasts, still called Estotiland, after the Zeni's designation.

2

This voyage is vouched for by the most respectable authorities and generally admitted by the learned.1 Authors like Wyfliet, Pontanus, and Horn record it in their important works, and trustworthy historians, Kolno's contemporaries, mention the latter's American discoveries. Michael Lok sets down on his map of 1582, to the West of Greenland, a country designated by the legend; "Jac. Scolvus Groetland." His drawing, as he acknowledges, is based upon a chart made at Seville and presented to Henry VIII. by Giovanni Verrazzano. Gomara, who received much valuable information from Olaus the Goth in regard to the history of the northern countries, speaks of Kolno's voyage in his "Storia Generale delle Indie," when describing Labrador; and so also does Herrera in his "Historia General."4

Lelewel was the first to correctly identify the Polish pilot as John from the village Kolno in Masovia.5

1 Moosmüller, S. 226; Kunstmann, S. 48; De Costa, Sailing Directions, p. 22, seq.; Kretschmer, S. 244; von Humboldt, Examen, t. ii. p. 152; Cronau, S. 147.

2 Wyfliet, Descriptionis Ptolemaica Augmentum, ed. 1603, p. 102, ap. De Costa, Sailing Directions, p. 22: "Secundum detectæ hujus regionis decus tulit Johannes Scolnus Polonus, qui anno reparatæ salutis MCCCCLXXVI., octingenta et sex annis a prima ejus lustratione, navigans ultra Norvegiam, Greenlandiam Frislandiamque, boreale hoc fretum ingressus, sub ipso arctico circulo, ad Labora

To John of Kolno could hardly be awarded the full honors of a discoverer of America, because he, no doubt, availed himself of the faint knowledge of the ocean route to Greenland and the American coast, still preserved in the northern kingdoms; yet his merits were great in achieving his distant western voyage. No one seems to deny them.

The same justice is not done to another mariner who, shortly after, got sight of more southern portions of our hemisphere, and who, if made immortal perhaps by circumstances, which he may have considered as most unfortunate, is not without deserts for having consigned and communicated such notices and reports as have most probably completed the information which Columbus had carefully gathered concerning the existence of the West Indies and the two distinct routes leading respectively to, and back from, them.

It can hardly be doubted that Alonso Sanchez de Huelva landed in the year 1484 on one of the Islands of the Antilles, likely San Domingo, when carried farther west than he wished by continuous eastern and northeastern winds, while on a voyage either from the coasts of Spain or from the Madeira Islands.1 Such an assertion is apt to arouse the bile of Columbus's admirers. We are aware that the greatest of discoverers has been slandered shamefully, but it is our opinion, also, that the great deeds and the names of illustrious men should not be effaced from historical records in order to secure to him undeserved merits on the part of science or religion. Juan Perez de Guzman has lately made such a mistake when declaring that the landing of Alonso Sanchez in the Antilles is nothing

tum, Douay, 1603, p. 102; Pontanus, Rerum Danicarum Historia, Amsterdam, 1631, p. 763; von

Humboldt, Examen Critique, t. ii.

p. 153.

1 Bastian, Bd. i. S. 444, n. 2; alii.