In the illustrious year of 1498, which witnessed Sebastian Cabot’s westward discoveries along North America, and Columbus’s sighting of South America, Vasco da Gama, pursuing his eastward navigations, crossed the Indian Ocean, dropped anchor off the city of Calicut, on the Malagar coast, and set up on shore a marble pillar as proof of his discovery of India by an ocean highway. Thus Portugal offset Spain’s claim to the West Indies by priority of discovery, with a claim through first discovery to the East Indies, and stood ready to assert it, while England allowed her right, by the same token, in the North American continent to lapse.

Spain and Portugal continued in sharp rivalry during the half decade immediately following. In 1499 the coast of South America was touched at about Surinam by the Spaniard Alonzo de Ojeda and the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, sailing for Spain. The same year the coast of Brazil was discovered by a Portuguese navigator, Vincente Yarez Pinzon. He had been a companion of Columbus. The next year possession of Brazil was taken for the crown of Portugal by Pedro 91Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese commander, who was driven to its coast by adverse winds when making a voyage to India by Vasco da Gama’s course. Three years later a settlement was begun there by Amerigo Vespucci, now in the service of Portugal. In 1500 Gaspar de Cortereal, Portuguese, attempted to follow the Cabots’ track of discovery opened in the northwest. Coming upon the coast of Labrador he explored it for six hundred miles. He discovered Nova Scotia, the St. Lawrence, and also Hudson’s Strait. Then he returned to Lisbon with his two caravals freighted with natives—men, women, and children—whom he had captured and brought home for slavery. The next year Cortereal departed on a second voyage for further discovery and presumably more slaves, and was never more heard from. His brother, Michael de Cortereal, sailed in search of him, and also was lost. Then two armed ships were sent out by the king of Portugal to search for both brothers; but no trace of either could be found. It was finally assumed that both fell victims to the vengeance of the natives for the thefts of their people. Upon the strength of Gaspar de Cortereal’s voyages Portugal attempted to establish a claim to the discovery of Newfoundland and the adjacent coast of North America. But in this she was not successful. Spain, however, held firmly to all of her American possessions, indefinitely defined.

England remained passive till 1501, when a new movement was started in the Cabots’ home city of Bristol. Three Bristol merchants—Richard Ward, 92Thomas Ashehurst, and John Thomas—and three Portuguese mariners—John Fernandus, Francis Fernandus, and John Gundlur—came together for a venture in the track of the Cabots. A patent was obtained from King Henry, under date of March 19, 1501, which conferred upon them the same powers that had originally been given the Cabots, and was in terms similar to the Cabot patents. Whether they sent out an expedition that year is not known. The next year, however, the personnel of the company had changed, with the dropping of Ward and Thomas and the substitution of Hugh Eliot in their place; and under this organization, probably in 1503, a voyage was made which resulted in discovery at Newfoundland and along the Labrador coast. The only record of this voyage is given by Hakluyt in the following excerpt from the merchant Robert Thorne’s “Booke” of 1527, addressed to the English Ambassador at the court of Spain:

"A briefe extract concerning the discoverie of Newfound-land taken out of the booke of M. Robert Thorne, to Doctor Leigh &c.

“I reason that as some sickenesses are hereditarie, so this inclination or desire of this discovery I inherited from my father, which with another marchant of Bristol named Hugh Eliot, were the discoverers of the Newfound-lands; of the which there is no doubt (as nowe plainely appeareth) if the Mariners would then have bene ruled, and followed their Pilots minde, 93but the lands of the West Indies, from whence all the golde commeth, had bene ours; for all is one coast as ............