Neuve".]

Gomez left Corunna in the winter of 1524-5, and reached the
North-American coast somewhere about Florida. He probably only began
to investigate closely after he passed into the broad gulf of Maine,
between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia. Here he sighted from the sea the
lofty mountains of New Hampshire, and steered for the mouth of the
Penobscot River (which he named the River of Deer), a title which
sticks to the locality--in Deer Island--at the present day. But this
being no opening of a broad strait, he passed on into the Bay of Fundy
(from Portuguese word, _Fundo_, the bottom of a sack or passage),
explored its two terminal gulfs, then returned along the coast of Nova
Scotia,[13] past Cape Sable, and so to the "gut" or Canal of Canso.
Gomez realized that Cape Breton was an island (we now know that it is
two islands separated by a narrow watercourse), but thought that Cabot
Strait was a great bay, and guessed nothing of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and the chance of securing for Spain the possession of this
mighty waterway into the heart of North America.

[Footnote 13: The name Nova Scotia was not applied to this peninsula
until 1621, by the British Government. It was at first included with
New Brunswick under the Spanish name of Norumbega, and after 1603 was
called by the French "Acadie".]

From Cape North he crossed over to the south coast of Newfoundland,
and followed this more or less till he came to Cape Race. Newfoundland
was a "very cold and savage land", and Gomez decided it was no use
prosecuting any farther his enquiry as to a water passage across North
America, because, if it existed, it must lie in latitudes of frozen
sea and be unnavigable.