[Sidenote: João Fernandez sighted Greenland, 1500 ?]
On the other hand, we seem to be able to conclude from the royal letters patent to Miguel Corte-Real that Gaspar made two voyages, one in 1500, and another in 1501, and that it was the same country (i.e., Newfoundland) that he visited on both occasions. This is also confirmed by the legend on the Portuguese chart of about 1520. If it was not he who on the first voyage, in 1500, saw Greenland without being able to approach it, we must conclude that yet another expedition, on which Greenland was sighted, left Portugal in the year 1500. One is then inclined to suppose that this was commanded by the same João Fernandez, to whom the King gave letters patent as early as October 1499. This supposition becomes still more probable when we take it in conjunction with what has already been said as to the possible origin of the name of Labrador (see p. 331). We must suppose that this is the same man from the Azores who, under the name of John Fernandus, took part in the Bristol enterprise of 1501, and who is further mentioned in documents of as early as 1492, together with another man from the Azores, Pero de Barcellos, and is described as a "llavorador." These men would already at that time have been engaged in making discoveries at sea.
If we compare the legend attached to Labrador (Greenland) on Diego Ribero's Spanish map of 1529 with the corresponding legend on the anonymous Portuguese chart of about 1520 this will also confirm our supposition. While on the latter we read that "the Portuguese saw the land, but did not enter it," Ribero's map has: "this land was discovered by the English, but there is nothing in it that is worth having." As this part of Ribero's map is evidently a copy of the Portuguese maps, we may conclude Ribero's alteration of the legend to mean that doubtless the land was first sighted by the Portuguese, but that it was the English who first succeeded in landing there, and in this way were its real discoverers. If we add to this the statement on the sixteenth-century Portuguese chart preserved at Wolfenbüttel, that the land was discovered by Englishmen from Bristol, and that the man who first gave news of it was a "labrador" from the Azores, then everything seems to be in agreement.