and economic interaction. Caboto/Cabot's voyage received financial backing by Italian banking houses in London and the Bardi family banking firm of Florence. With financing secure and patent issued by Henry VII to Cabot and his three sons, he set sail in 1496. Upon landing on 24 June 1497, Cabot raised the Venetian and Papal banners, claiming the land for the King of England and recognising the religious authority of the Roman Catholic Church. After this landing, Cabot spent some weeks "discovering the coast," with most "discovered after turning back." Cabot's expedition is believed to be the first by Europeans to mainland North America since the Vikings five hundred years before. Historian Alwyn Ruddock who worked on Cabot and his era for 35 years suggested Fr. Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis and the other friars who accompanied Cabot's 1498 expedition had stayed in Newfoundland and founded a mission which would have made it the first Christian settlement on the continent. Nova Scotia was further explored by the Portuguese explorer João Álvares Fagundes (1520) as he searched south of his fishing settlements in Newfoundland. 17th century French colonization and Acadia In 1605, French colonists established the first permanent European settlement in the future Canada (and the first north of Florida) at Port Royal, founding what would become known as Acadia. The French, led by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts established the first capital for the colony Acadia at Port Royal. Acadia (French: Acadie) was located in the northeastern region of North America comprising what is now the Canadian Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, Gaspé, in Quebec, and to the Kennebec River in southern Maine. By 1621, however, France had ceded territories including Port Royal and Acadia back to the British Crown. In that year King James I (James VI of Scotland) granted Sir William Alexander of Menstrie a charter to create the colony of Nova Scotia (“New Scotland”) which encompassed three Canadian provinces and portions of what is now Maine. The colony, whose capital, Charles Fort, was located near today's town of Annapolis Royal, lasted only until 1623 at which time the attempted settlement was abandoned, leaving the area to the French. Sir William's legacy, however, lives on in the form of the name, flag and arms of the modern Canadian province of Nova Scotia. There was a slow transition from trading (primarily involving male explorers and