Some say this land was part of Cape Breton.* Others believe it was somewhere along the coast of Labrador. This they believe because Cabot is known to have said, when speaking of his discovery, “That sea is covered with fishes, which can be taken, not only with the net, but also with a basket in which a stone is put, so that the basket may plunge into the water.” And he also said that from that new country the fishermen could get all the fish they could trade. Now, it is on the coast of Labrador that the fish are most plentiful, and so men reason that he must have landed there.
We know for a certainty that he did discover the continent somewhere along the coast of what is now known as British North America. And so, from the deck of that little vessel that sailed so quietly out of Bristol harbor that bright day over four hundred years ago, our country* was first seen by the men of the Old World; and John Cabot, who was in command of that vessel, first placed the flag of England on North American soil.
* Cape Breton Island lies at the northeast tip of Nova Scotia, Canada. Several other places have been suggested, including Cape Bonavista on Newfoundland a little further northeast. Labrador, evidently favoured by Edith Marsh, is part of the mainland further north. The exact location is unknown.
* The author, Edith Louise Marsh, was Canadian.
* It would be many years before English-speaking peoples rose in the lands claimed for England by John Cabot. Colonisation attempts began in 1584 under Elizabeth I with the ill-fated Roanoke colony: see The Lost Colony of Roanoke. That was followed by the more succesful Virginia, and then by the Pilgrim Fathers at Massachusetts: see The Voyage of the ‘Mayflower’. Settlement in Canada took longer and was hotly contested by France. See also Hudson Bay and The Seven Years’ War.