Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/62

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
50
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

been received. It is also clear that a Portuguese colony existed for some time at Inganish, which was abandoned on account of the cold. Was Inganish the site also of Fagundes's colony, as well as of the settlement made in 1567? It seems improbable that the colony of 1521, cut off from all communication from the mother-country for half a century, should have survived until 1567, and we are forced to conclude that the cattle and swine left on Sable Island in 1553 were the property of the Fagundes colonists, who had abandoned their settlements. It seems clear, at the same time, that the colonists who sailed in 1567 were aware that Fagundes had found Newfoundland too cold for a settlement, and had given the preference to Cape Breton. We must assume, therefore, that the colonists of 1567 settled some place in Cape Breton or Nova Scotia. Champlain says the Portuguese abandoned their settlement at Ningani (Inganish) on account of the cold. A Portuguese gentleman informed me last winter that there existed a tradition at Viana that the colony of Terra Nova was sold to the English on account of the cold climate. Senhor do Canto refers to a similar tradition, but applies it to the colony of 1521, instead of to that of 1567. This sale must have taken place after 1567, for otherwise the Portuguese, having sold out their rights to the English, would hardly have attempted, after the transfer, to make a settlement in that country.

IV. A Spanish Settlement at Sydney, Cape Breton (Spanish Harbor), between 1580-'97.—We are told that in the seventeenth century Louisburg (called English Harbor) was frequented by the English fishermen; St Ann's by the French; and Spanish Harbor by the Spaniards. Why was Sydney—at one time known as Spanish Harbor—the favorite resort of Spanish fishermen? About the time Fagundes sailed to Cape Breton, the Spaniards seemed to question his right to that country, as appears from the Spanish map of 1527, where the Spanish line of demarkation includes Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, leaving Newfoundland to the Portuguese. It is probable, however, that the Spaniards did not practically question the claims of the Portuguese, which were specially guarded in commissions to Spanish explorers. In 1580, however, the question was settled by the annexation of Portugal and its dominions by Spain. We know that toward the close of the sixteenth century a Spanish colony was sent to Cape Breton, and we can assume that it sailed some time after 1580. Our only account of it is a melancholy one, for Charlevoix says that the forty poor wretches whom the Marquis de la Roche left on Sable Island (1598) "found on the sea-shore some wrecks of vessels, out of which they built barracks to protect themselves. They were the remains of Spanish vessels which had sailed to settle Cape Breton." Any one who has seen the wreck-strewed coast of Sable Island must remember it as suggesting a graveyard of vessels. Those that have been there a few years are soon covered by the drifting sands, and the half-buried skeletons of