Pioneers in Canada

Pioneers in

ical dominion over North America after the voyage of Captain John Rut in 1527. This was the fault of Sebastian Cabot, the son of the man who founded British America, and who had returned to England long afterwards as the Grand Pilot appointed by Edward VI to further the discovery of a northern sea passage to China. Through

covery of the North-west Passage across America to China came into favour. MARTIN FROBISHER[1] offered himself as a discoverer, and the Earl of Warwick found the means which provided him with two small sailing vessels of 25 and 20 tons each, besides a pinnace of 10 tons.[2]

ed on and on across the stormy Atlantic, past the south end of Greenland, and over the great gulf that separates Greenland from Labrador. He missed the entrance to Hudson's Bay,

to be full of gold. The following year 1578, Frobisher started on his third American voyage with a fleet of fifteen vessels, mainly financed by Queen Elizabeth, and manned to a great extent by the sons of the aristocracy, besides a hundred persons who were going out as colonists. For this region of ice and snow which was believed to be a mass of gold-bearing rocks! But the result was one of bitter disappointment. The captains were bewildered by the immense icebergs, "so vast that, as they melted, torrents poured from them in sparkling

hips to Newfoundland, where he entered St. John's Bay, and in the presence of the Basque, Portuguese, and Breton fishermen took formal possession of the country for Queen Elizabeth, raising a pillar on which the arms of England were engraved as a token. He then proceeded to grant lands to

essel, the Golden Hinde, but refused to leave the men on the Squirrel to their fate. Consequently, between the Azores and the nor

more and more ships from Bristol and Devonshire to the coasts of that great island and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. In 1592 the English adventurers got as far west as Anticosti Island

find a good harbour here, he stood out for the south and definitely discovered and named Cape Cod, not far from the modern city of Boston. From Cape Cod he made his way to the Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay, and here he built a store

ther with those of the colonists farther south, led to the creation of chartered companies, and to the great British colonies of New England, New York, Virgini

f the French and the dislike of the crews of the fishing vessels to permanent settlers who might interfere with the fishing industry, the English colonization of Newfoundland to some extent caught hold, so that in 1650 there were about two thousand colon

1 James I gave a grant of all this territory to Sir William Alexander under the name of Nova Scotia, and both Charles I and Cromwell encouraged settlement in this beautiful region. When Charles II ceded it to France in 1667 the English and Scottish colonists who were residing there, and the English settlers of New England, refused to recognize the effects of the Treaty of Bréda, and so harassed the French in the years which followed that in 1713 Nova Scotia was, toge

he seventeenth century onwards they were becoming increasingly interested in the whale fisheries and the fur trade

d the entrance of Hudson's Straits and reached a point as far north as 72° 41', a lofty granite island, which he named Sanderson's Hope. He saw beyond him a great sea, free

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; though he returned to Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New York). In 1610 Hudson accepted a British commission to sail beyond where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the north-west passage to China. I

d CAPTAIN JAMES, mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the notice of merchants in England the

up by Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the cousin of Charles II. They were sent out by Prince Rupert in command of an expedition financed by him and a number of London merchants, and in 1669 the New England captain, Gillam, returned to England with Chouart and the first cargo of furs from Hudson's Bay. This cargo so completely met the expectations of those

. He became Sir Martin Frobisher over the wars of the

ork, salt fish, biscuit, meal for making bread, dried peas, oatmeal, rice, cheese, butter, beer, and wine, with brandy for emergencies. As regards beer, the men were to have a ration of 1 gallo

to be the southernmost penins

more southerly direction. In this way was founded the (afterwards abandoned) colony of Roanoke, in North Carolina. It was to this region th

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