New France And New England Author:Fiske, John Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A substantial monument of their early activity in that quarter is furnished by the fortified town of Elmina, upon the Gold Coast, whence in these British days ru... more »ns the direct road to Ku- massi. Elmina was founded in the fourteenth century by men of Dieppe, and the trade in elephants' tusks then inaugurated gave rise to the ivory manufactures which still flourish in the little Norman seaport.1 Under these circumstances it is not strange that the voyages of Columbus and the Cabots should have met with a quick response from the mariners of northern Gaul. Local traditions of a patriotic sort have asserted that Normandy and Brittany did not wait for the Cabot voyages to be taught the existence of the Newfoundland fisheries, but had learned the lesson for themselves even before the crossing of the Sea of Darkness by Columbus.2 There is no reason why fishing voyages to the Newfoundland banks might not have been made before 1492, but on the other hand there is no respectable evidence that any such voyages had been made.' The strong impression made upon JohnCabot by the enormous numbers of codfish off the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland1 indicates that the western stretches of the ocean were by no means familiar to the fishermen of the English Channel. The first authentic record Breton ships we have of Breton ships in New- on the banks foundland waters is in the year 1504, and from that time forward we never lose a year. The place once found was too good to be neglected, and thus a presumption is raised against any date earlier than 1504. 1 Gaffkrel, Etude sur les rapports dt P Am'erique et de F ancien Continent avant Christophe Colomb, Paris, 1869, p. 316. 2 Such claims are to be found in the extremely uncritical book of Desmarquets, Memoires chronologiques pour servir a rhis...« less