Note 4 — Chapter I

Baccalaos is an old ante-columbian name for codfish, in extensive use in the South of Europe. Humboldt says (Ghillany, p. 4), “Stockfischland, von Bacallao, dem Spanischen Namen des stockfisches.” Mr. Brevoort says it is the Iberian name for codfish; see his Verrazano the Navigator, pp. 61, 137, where the etymology of the word is given. The name is found on many of the early charts. On that of Reynel, the Portuguese pilot, assigned by geographers to the year 1504 or 1505, it appears on the east coast as “Y dos Bocalhas” (Island of Codfish). On the chart of Ruysch, 1508, it is seen as applied to a small island, or cape, as “J. Baccalaurus.” On another Portuguese map published by Kunstmann, assigned to the year 1514, or a little later, the name “Bacalnaos” is applied to Newfoundland and Labrador, including also Nova Scotia. After various fortunes the name became subject to the limitations which overtook “Norumbega,” and has settled down on a small island on the east coast of Newfoundland. There appears to be no evidence, except Martyr’s statement, that Cabot gave the name to the region he discovered; and it may well be asked on what book or map he had caused it to be inscribed? There is no such name on Cosa’s map, the only early record of the Cabots’ discoveries in the New World. The name was probably applied by the Portuguese. Dr. John G. Kohl, the distinguished geographer, says that the Portuguese originated the name of Tierra de Bacalhas (“the stock-fish country”) and gave currency to it, though the word, like the cod-fishery itself, appears to be of Germanic origin. See his learned note in full in Doc. Hist. of Maine, i. 188, 189, and compare Parkman’s Pioneers of France, pp. 170, 171. Parkman says: “If, in the original Basque, baccalaos is the word for codfish, and if Cabot found it in use among the inhabitants of Newfoundland, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Basques had been there before him.” The affirmative of this proposition—that the Cabots had been preceded by the fishermen—has been held by a few writers, but it is generally believed that the evidence for it is insufficient. Dr. Kohl says: “That the name should have been introduced by the Cabots is for many reasons most improbable; and that they should have heard and received the name from the Indians, is certainly not true; though both these facts are asserted by Peter Martyr, De Orbe Novo, dec. iii. ch. 6.” (Kohl, pp. 188, 189; and compare his statement on p. 481.) Dr. Kohl had already said that the name, with some transposition of the letters, had long been used, before the discoveries of the Cabots and Cortereals, in many Flemish and German books and documents. It should be added that the statement of Peter Martyr, that the savages on the coast visited by Sebastian Cabot called a certain kind of fish found there in abundance baccalaos, is repeated in the legend on Cabot’s map, published in 1544, as rendered by Hakluyt in his folio of 1589, p. 511. Indeed, much in the general description of the coast and the inhabitants, both of the sea and the land, is similar in both accounts, and indicates one origin.