yet may any ship pause betwixt, the greatest part of them having seldom
lesse water than eight or ten fathoms about them"--History of Travalle
into Virginia Britannica.]

[Footnote 7: This, the most striking cape of the Atlantic coast line,
made a very prominent landmark for all the early ocean voyagers
approaching it, and all were greatly impressed by it, whether they came
from the south and fought their way through its shoals to eastward, or,
coming from the north, found themselves caught in the deep pocket which
it makes with Cape Cod Bay.

The Spaniard Gomez (1525) gave it the name "Cabo de do Aricifes" cape
of the reefs, referring to the dangerous shoals to the eastward. The
Frenchmen Champlain and Du Monts named it "Cape Blanc", and the Dutch
pilots, also noting its sandy cliffs, called it Witte Hoeck. The English
mariners at first accepted his last name of White Cape, but the English
Captain Anthony Gosnold, the first to make a direct passage to the
waters of the Gulf of Maine from Europe, although at first he called it
"Shoal Hope", soon changed this, because of the success of his fishing,
to "Cape Cod", which title, commonplace though it be, has been the name
to endure despite Prince Charles's attempt to change it to Cape James in
honor of his father.]

[Footnote 8: Cape Sable, at the southern end of Nova Scotia, has held
this title from very old times. It is so indicated on a Portuguese map
of the middle of the sixteenth century.]