It was south
of Labrador. It is thought to have been Rhode Island; but certainly,
passing north and south, the Norse were the first white men to see Canada.

Did some legend, dim as a forgotten dream, come down to Columbus in 1492
of the Norsemen's western land? All sailors of Europe yearly fished in
Iceland. Had one of Columbus's crew heard sailor yarns of the new land?
If so, Columbus must have thought the new land part of Asia; for ever
since Marco Polo had come from China, Europe had dreamed of a way to Asia
by the sea. What with Portugal and Spain dividing the New World, all the
nations of Europe suddenly awakened to a passion for discovery.

[Illustration: DIVISION OF THE NEW WORLD BETWEEN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.]

There were still lands to the north, which Portugal and Spain had not
found,--lands where pearls and gold might abound. At Bristol in England
dwelt with his sons John Cabot, the Genoese master mariner, well
acquainted with Eastern-trade. Henry VII commissions him on a voyage of
discovery--an empty honor, the King to have one fifth of all profit,
Cabot to bear all expense. The _Matthew_ ships from Bristol with a crew
of eighteen in May of 1497. North and west sails the tumbling craft two
thousand miles. Colder grows the air, stiffer the breeze in the bellying
sails, till the _Matthew's_ crew are shivering on decks amid fleets of
icebergs that drift from Greenland in May and June. This is no realm of
spices and gold. Land looms through the mist the last week in June, {4}
rocky, surf-beaten, lonely as earth's ends, with never a sound but the
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.