faire arbres et matz de navires parquoy ce roy a delibere de avoir grant profit de la terre a cause des bois pour faire des navires car il en avait grant besoign et aussi des hommes lesquils seront per excellence de grant peine et les meilleurs esclaves qu'on saiche jusques a ceste heure."

The French translation, it will be seen, calls the Gypsies Egyptians, of which the English word is a corruption. They are styled Ægyptians in the Statute 22 Henry VIII. cap. x. but the designation of the Venetian Ambassador is that by which they were universally known in Italy. In the Dissertation of Grellman on this singular race, he remarks, (chap. i.)

"The name of Zigeuner has extended itself farther than any other; these people are so called not only in all Germany, Italy, and Hungary (tzigany)* but frequently in Transilvania, Wallacia, and Moldavia (ciganis). Moreover, the Turks and other Eastern Nations have no other than this name for them (tschingenés)."

The characteristics of the race are stated by Swinburne, (Travels through Spain, p. 230)—

"Their men are tall, well-built, and swarthy, with a bad scowling eye, and a kind of favourite lock of hair left to grow down before their ears, which rather increases the gloominess of their features; their women are nimble, and supple-jointed; when young they are generally handsome, with very fine black eyes; when old, they become the worst-favoured hags in nature.”

It is remarkable that the early settlers in New-England were struck with the resemblance. Purchas (vol. iv. p. 1842) has "a Relation or Journal of a Plantation settled at Plimouth in NewEngland and proceedings thereof: Printed 1622, and here abbreviated." At p. 1849, we find in the month of March, the following entry :

Saturday in the morning we dismissed the savage and gave him a knife, and bracelet, and a ring; he promised within a night or two to come again and to bring with him some of the Massasoyts our neighbours with such beaver skins as they had, to truck with us. Saturday and Sunday reasonable fair days. On this day came again the Savage and brought with him five other tall proper men; they had every man a deer's skin on him, and the prin

* Is not here the original of zany?

cipal of them had a wild cat's skin or such like on one arm &c. They are of complexion like our English Gypsies, &c.”

On the same page it is stated, that an Englishman named Hunt had practised the same infamous deception as Cortereal:

"These people are ill affected towards the English by reason of one Hunt, a master of a Ship who deceived the people and got them under color of trucking with them twenty out of this very place where we inhabit, and seven men from the Nausites and carried them away and sold them for slaves, like a wretched man (for twenty pounds a man) that care not what mischief he do them for his profit."

The passage in the Letter of the Venetian Ambassador answers, incidentally, an important purpose. A doubt has been suggested by Thomasius, Griselini, and the English geographer Salmon, whether Munster and Spelman do not err in naming 1417, instead of 1517, as the era at which the gypsies made their appearance in Europe, and important inferences are connected with the rectification of the supposed mistake.

The Encyclopædia Britannica (Edinburgh Edition of 1810,) under the title "Gypsies" remarks—

"Munster, it is true, who is followed and relied upon by Spelman, fixes the time of their first appearance to the year 1417, but as he owns that the first whom he ever saw were in 1529, it is probably an error of the press for 1517, especially as other historians inform us that when Sultan Selim conquered Egypt in the year 1517 several of the Nations refused to submit to the Turkish yoke and revolted under Zinganeus, whence the Turks call them Zinganees."

The same suggestion is found in The London Cyclopædia. It must disappear, with its train of conjectures, before this Letter, written in 1501, which assumes the characteristics of the race to be so familiarly known as even to furnish a convenient illustration and save the necessity of a particular description. To those who hold the Hindostan origin of this people, and have been struck with the admirable Memoir of Captain Richardson in the Seventh volume of The Asiatic Researches, this item of evidence will be deeply interesting.

CHAP. IV.

THE REGION VISITED BY CORTEREAL-STATEMENTS OF THE THREE PORTUGUESE HISTORIANS, DAMIANO GOES, OSORIUS, AND GALVANO-OF GOMARA, HERrera, and FUMEE-EDITION OF PTOLEMY PUBLISHED AT BASLE 1540THE NAME LABRADOR," i. e. "LABORER."

THE inquiry now arises as to the point at which Cortereal reached the American Continent, and followed the coast northwards for a space of between six and seven hundred miles.

Damiano Goes, a writer of the highest credit, the contemporary of Emanuel, and historiographer of Portugal, says, (Chronica del Rey D. Manoel, cap. lxvi.) that it was—

"A region which on account of its great freshness, and the vast groves of trees all along the coast, he called Greenland," (terra que por ser muito fresca et de grandes arvoredos como o sam todas as que jazem per a quella banda lhe pos nome Terra Verde.)

Another Portuguese writer, Osorius, (De rebus Emanuelis, &c. lib. ii.) says, that Cortereal conferred the name on account of the singular amenity of the region (" ad terram tandem pervenit quam propter singularem amœnitatem Viridem appellavit.”)

There is a third writer of that country, Galvano, of whom a translation by Hakluyt appeared in 1601. He says, (p. 35,)

"In the year 1500, it is reported that Gasper Cortereal craved a general license of the King Emanuel, to discover the New Foundland. He went from the Island Terceira with two ships well appointed at his own cost, and he sailed into that climate which standeth under the North in 50 degrees of latitude, which is a land now called after his name, and he came home in safety unto the City of Lisbon."

It is abundantly clear that Cortereal began his career to the southward of the St. Lawrence; and he may have reached the Gulf, and perhaps the southern extremity of Labrador.

Gomara, who, as we have seen, limits Cabot to 58 degrees, says of Cortereal (ch. 37)-" Dexo su nombre a las ylas que estan a la boca del Golfo Qudrado y en mas de 50 grados," a passage translated by Richard Eden, (Decades, fol. 318,) “he named the Quadrado after his name, Cortesreales, lyinge in the L degrees and more."

Herrera, who conducts Cabot to 68, says of Cortereal (Dec. i. lib.vi. ch. 16,) "No hiço mas que dexar su nombre a las Islas que estan a la boca del Golfo Quadrado en mas de 50 grados." ("He did nothing more than give his name to the islands which are in the mouth of the Gulph Quadrado in upwards of 50 degrees.") Fumée (Histoire Generale des Indes, ch. xxxvii. fol. 48)

makes the same statement.

In the edition of Ptolemy, published at Bâsle in 1540, the first of the Maps is entitled "Typus Orbis Universalis," on which is seen in the extreme North of the New World, "Terra Nova sive de Bacalhos," and below it, to the southward, is an island designated "Corterati," with a great stream in its rear, evidently intended for the St. Lawrence and thus characterised "Per hoc fretum iter patet ad Molucas."

There can be no difficulty in understanding why the region whence it was supposed the fifty-seven unfortunate natives so well adapted for Labour had been stolen received its present name. It was talked of as the Slave Coast of America, and the commercial designation which thus entered into the speculations of adventurers seems to have quickly supplanted the appellation conferred on it by Cortereal. A similar triumph of the vocabulary of the mart is found at the same period, and amongst the same people, in the case of Brazil. Barros (Decade i. lib. v. chap. 2) is indignant that the name of Santa-Cruz, given by Cabral, should have yielded to one adopted "by the vulgar," from the wood which constituted, at first, its great export.

So, in most of the old works, we find the Asiatic possessions of Portugal, designated as the Spice Islands, &c. It cannot be doubted that the objects of Cortereal's second voyage were Timber and Slaves. Twenty years before, there had been erected on the shores of Africa the Fort of D'Elmina, to follow up the suggestion of Alonzo Gonzales pointing out the southern Africans as articles of commerce. We readily comprehend, then, the exultation with which a new region was heard of, where the inhabitants seemed to be of a gentle temper, and of physical powers such as to excite the admiration of the Venetian Ambassador. That Cortereal on the subsequent visit fell a sacrifice to the just exasperation of the people whose friends and relatives-men, women, and children-he had perfidiously carried off, is very probable, and the shores of America were thus saved from witnessing all the horrors that have marked the accursed traffic in the other hemisphere.

The impressions made on the natives, of dread and detestation, seem not to have been speedily effaced. Verrazani, twenty-two years afterwards, passed along the coast from Florida to the latitude of 50 degrees, and it is curious to follow his narrative in connexion with our knowledge of Cortereal's base conduct, and its probable consequences to himself, and the brother who went to seek him. Verrazani speaks, in warm terms, of the kind and cordial reception he every where experienced in the first part of his route, and in the latitude of 41° 40′ he remained for a considerable time, (see his Narrative in Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 420.) As he proceeds further North, we recognise the coincidence of his description of the country with that of Cortereal.

"Piena di foltissime selve; gli alberi dellequali erano abeti, cipressi et simili chi si generano in regioni fredde,” (“full of thick woods, consisting of fir, cypress, and other similar trees of cold countries.") And so of the dress of the inhabitants, "Vestono di pelli d'orso et lupi cervieri et marini et d'altri animali,” (“they clothe themselves with the skins of the bear, the lucerne, the seal, and other animals.") He is struck with the change of character,