Basques
A pre-Aryan race, occupying the border-land between France
and Spain. Assertions have repeatedly been made that they made voyages
to America, and discovered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, before Cartier, and
even before Cabot, but these have never been substantiated. All the
evidence goes to show that they frequented the Newfoundland fisheries in
the sixteenth century, but not earlier. =Index=: (Samuel de Champlain era) Contraband
traders, 140; threaten French on St. Pierre Island, 174. =Bib.=: Dawson,
The St. Lawrence Basin; Reade, The Basques in North America (R. S.
C., 1888); Howley, Old Basque Tombstones at Placentia.