"Le septiesme jour du dict moys d'Octobre arriva icy vne des deux caravelles de cestuy roy de Portugal; lesquelles l'an passe il avoit envoyez pour descouvrir la terre vers transmontane et en estoit capitaine Gaspard Cotrad. Et a rapporte avoir trouve, entre maistral et ponent, vne terre qui est loingtaine d'icy de cinq cens lieues. Laquelle auparavant iamais d'aucun n'avoit este congneue. Et par la coste d'icelle terre ilz allerent environ CL lieues, et iamais ne trouverent fin perquoy ils croyent que ce soit terre ferme laquelle est voisine d'une aultre terre laquelle l'annee passee fut descouverte soulz la transmontane lesquelles caravelles ne peurent arriver jusques la pourceque la mer estoit glacee et pleine de neige. Et la ont trouve vne multitude de tres gros fleuves; ilz disent que cest terre est molt populee et les maisons des habitans sont d'aucuns bois tres longs couvertes par dehors de peaulx de poisson. Ilz ont amene de ce pays la tant hommes que femmes et petis enfans huyt personnages: & dedans l'autre caravelle qui se attend d'heure en heure en vient aultre cinquante. Les gens icy sont de esgalle couleur, figure, stature, regard et semblable de egiptiens; vestus de peaulx de diverses bestes, mais principallement de louves. En l'este ilz tournent le poil par dehors et iver le contraire. Ft cestes peaulx en aulcune maniere ne sont point consues ensemble ni acoustrees, mais tout ainsi que elles sont ostees de la peau des bestes ilz les mettent tout alentour de leur espaulles et des bras. Les parties vergogneuses sont leiz avec auscunes cordes faictes des nerfz de poisson tres fortes. En facon qu'ilz semblent hommes saulvaiges. Ilz sont moult honteulx et doulx mais si bien faitz de bras et de jambes et d'espaulles qu'ils ne pourroyent estre mieulx. Leur visage est marquee en la maniere des Indiens; auscuns ont VI. marques auscuns VIII. et que plus moins. Ils parlent ma ilz ne sont entendus d'aulcuns et croy qu'il leur a este parle de tous langaiges qu'il est possible de parler. En leur pays il n'est point de fer, mais le cousteaulx sont d'aulcunes pierres, et semblablement leurs poinctes de leurs flesches; et ceulx des d'caravelles ont encores apporte d'icelle terre une piece d'espee rompue que estoit doree laquelle certainement semble avoir este faicte en Italie; un petit enfant de ces gens la avoit dedans les oreilles certaines pieces d'argent lesquelles sans doute sembloyent estre faiz a Venise laquelle chose me fait croire que ce soit terre ferme parceque ce n'est pas lieu que iamais plr y ayt este aulcunes navires car il eust este notice d'elles-Ilz ont tres grande habondance de saulmons harens, stoquefies et semblables poissons. Ilz ont aussi grande habondance de bois; & surtoutes de Pins pour 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 par 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 (tschingenes)." 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 supplejointed; 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 New-England 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 principal 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 references are connected with the rectification of the supposed mistake. The Encyclopædia Britannica (Edinburgh Edition of 1812), 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 POR- 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 amoenitatem 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 Quadrado 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 hico 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.") Fumee (Histoire Generale des Indes, ch. xxxvii. fol. 48) makes the same statement. In the edition of Ptolemy, published at Basle 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 had 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 |