The English based their claim to the right to colonize
North America on the discoveries of John Cabot, an Italian mariner in the
service of the Tudor king, Henry VII. In 1497 A.D. Cabot sailed from
Bristol across the northern Atlantic and made land somewhere between Labrador
and Nova Scotia. The following year he seems to have undertaken a second voyage
and to have explored the coast of North America nearly as far as Florida.
Cabot, like Columbus, believed he had reached Cathay and the dominions of the
Great Khan. Because Cabot found neither gold nor opportunities for profitable
trade, his expeditions were considered a failure, and for a long time the
English took no further interest in exploring the New World.
CARTIER'S VOYAGES, 1534-1542 A.D.
The discovery by Magellan of a strait leading into the
Pacific aroused hope that a similar passage, beyond the regions controlled by
Spain, might exist in North America. In 1534 A.D. the French king, Francis I,
sent Jacques Cartier to look for it. Cartier found the gulf and river which he
named after St. Lawrence, and also tried to establish a settlement near where
Quebec now stands. The venture was not successful, and the French did not
undertake the colonization of Canada till the first decade of the seventeenth century.
