which (under the name of Terra Nova[12]) the governorship was made
hereditary in the Corte-Real family. Cape Race for example--the most
prominent point of the island--is really the Portuguese _Cabo
Raso_--the bare or "shaved" cape--and this was by the Spaniards
regarded as the westernmost limit of Portuguese sovereignty in that
direction. For the Spaniards were by no means pleased at the intrusion
of other nations into a New World which they desired to monopolize
entirely for the Spanish Crown. They did not so much mind sharing it,
along the line agreed upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, with the
Portuguese, but the ingress of the English and French infuriated them.
The Basque people of the north-east corner of Spain were a hardy
seafaring folk, especially bold in the pursuit of whales in the Bay of
Biscay, and eager to take a share in the salt-fish trade. This desire
took them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to Ireland and
Iceland. They began to fish off the Newfoundland coasts perhaps as
early as 1525. About this time also the Emperor Charles V, King of
Spain, having through one great Portuguese sea captain--Magalhães
(Magellan)--discovered the passage from Atlantic to Pacific across
the extremity of South America, thought by employing another
Portuguese--Estevão Gomez--to find a similar sea route through North
America, which would prove a short cut from Europe to China. This was
the famous "North-west Passage" the search for which drew so many
great and brave adventurers into the Arctic sea of America between
1500 and 1853, to be revealed at last by our fellow countrymen, but to
prove useless to navigation on account of the enormous accumulation of
ice.

[Footnote 12: Corte-Real's name of Terra Verde ("Greenland") was soon
dropped in favour of the older English name "New Land" (Newfoundland,
Terra Nova). This was at once adopted by the French seamen as "Terre