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English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
[Illustration]
NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA
Edited by
JUSTIN WINSOR
Librarian of Harvard University
Corresponding Secretary Massachusetts Historical Society
VOL. III
Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
Copyright, 1884,
by James R. Osgood and Company.
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
[_The English arms on the title are copied from the Molineaux map,
dated 1600._]
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. _Charles Deane_ 1
ILLUSTRATION: Sebastian Cabot, 5.
AUTOGRAPHS: Henry VII., 1; Henry VIII., 4; Edward VI., 6; Queen
Mary, 7.
CRITICAL ESSAY 7
ILLUSTRATIONS: La Cosa map (1500), _phototype_, 8, 8; Ruysch’s
map (1508), 9; Orontius Fine’s map (1531), 11; Stobnicza’s map
(1512), 13; Page of Peter Martyr in fac-simile, 15; Thorne’s
map (1527), 17; Sebastian Cabot’s map (1544), 22; Lok’s map
(1582), 40; Hakluyt-Martyr map (1587), 42; Portuguese Portolano
(1514-1520), 56.
CHAPTER II.
HAWKINS AND DRAKE. _Edward E. Hale_ 59
ILLUSTRATIONS: John Hawkins, 61; Zaltieri’s map (1566), 67;
Furlano’s map (1574), 68.
AUTOGRAPHS: John Hawkins, 61; Francis Drake, 65.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON DRAKE’S BAY 74
ILLUSTRATIONS: Modern map of California coast, 74; Viscaino’s
map (1602), 75; Dudley’s map (1646), 76, 77; Jeffreys’
sketch-map (1753), 77.
NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION. _The Editor_ 78
ILLUSTRATIONS: Hondius’s map, 79; Portus Novæ Albionis, 80;
Molineaux’s map (1600), 80; Sir Francis Drake, 81, 84; Thomas
Cavendish, 83.
CHAPTER III.
EXPLORATIONS TO THE NORTH-WEST. _Charles C. Smith_ 85
ILLUSTRATIONS: Martin Frobisher, 87; Molineaux globe (1592),
90; Molineaux map (1600), 91; Sir Thomas Smith, 94; James’s map
of Hudson Bay (1632), 96.
AUTOGRAPHS: Martin Frobisher, 87; John Davis, 89; George
Waymouth, 91; William Baffin, 94.
CRITICAL ESSAY 97
ILLUSTRATION: Luke Fox’s map of Baffin’s Bay (1635), 98.
THE ZENO INFLUENCE ON EARLY CARTOGRAPHY; FROBISHER’S AND
HUDSON’S VOYAGES. _The Editor_ 100
ILLUSTRATIONS: The Zeno map (_circa_ 1400), 100; map in Wolfe’s
_Linschoten_ (1598), 101; Beste’s map (1578), 102; Frobisher’s
Strait, 103.
CHAPTER IV.
SIR WALTER RALEGH: SETTLEMENTS AT ROANOKE AND VOYAGES TO
GUIANA. _William Wirt Henry_ 105
AUTOGRAPHS: Walter Ralegh, 105; Queen Elizabeth, 106; Ralph
Lane, 110.
CRITICAL ESSAY 121
ILLUSTRATIONS: White’s map in Hariot (1587), 124; De Laet’s map
(1630), 125.
AUTOGRAPH: Francis Bacon, 121.
CHAPTER V.
VIRGINIA, 1606-1689. _Robert A. Brock_ 127
ILLUSTRATIONS: Jamestown, 130; George Percy, 134; Seal of the
Virginia Company, 140; Lord Delaware, 142.
AUTOGRAPHS: King James, 127; Delaware, 133; Thomas Gates, 133;
George Percy, 134; George Calvert, 146; William Berkeley, 147.
CRITICAL ESSAY 153
AUTOGRAPHS: William Strachey, 156; Delaware, 156; John Harvey,
156; John West, 164.
NOTES ON THE MAPS OF VIRGINIA, ETC. _The Editor_ 167
ILLUSTRATION: Smith’s map of Virginia or the Chesapeake,
_phototype_, 167.
CHAPTER VI.
NORUMBEGA AND ITS ENGLISH EXPLORERS. _Benjamin F. De Costa_ 169
ILLUSTRATION: Map of Ancient Pemaquid, 177.
AUTOGRAPHS: J. Popham, 175; Ferd. Gorges, 175.
CRITICAL ESSAY 184
ILLUSTRATIONS: Modern map of Coast of Maine, 190; Henri II. map
(1543), 195; Hood’s map (1592), 197; Smith’s map of New England
(1616), 198.
AUTOGRAPHS: J. Popham, 175; Ferd. Gorges, 175.
EARLIEST ENGLISH PUBLICATIONS ON AMERICA, AND OTHER NOTES. _The
Editor_ 199
ILLUSTRATIONS: Title of Eden’s Münster, 200; Münster’s map
(1532), 201, (1540), 201; Title of Stultifera Nauis (1570),
202; Gilbert’s map (1576), 203; Linschoten, 206; John G. Kohl,
209; Lenox globe (1510-1512), 212; Extract from Molineaux globe
(1592), 213; Frankfort globe (1515), 215; Molineaux map (1600),
216.
AUTOGRAPHS: Humphrey Gilbert, 203; Richard Hakluyt, 204; Jul.
Cæsar, 205; Ro. Cecyll, 206; John Smith, 211.
CHAPTER VII.
THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW
ENGLAND.—PURITANS AND SEPARATISTS IN ENGLAND. _George E. Ellis_ 219
CRITICAL ESSAY 244
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PILGRIM CHURCH AND PLYMOUTH COLONY. _Franklin B. Dexter_ 257
ILLUSTRATIONS: Site of Scrooby Manor-House, 258; Map of Scrooby
and Austerfield, 259; Austerfield church, 260; Record of
William Bradford’s baptism, 260; Robinson’s House in Leyden,
262; Plan of Leyden, 263; Map of Cape Cod Harbor, 270; Map of
Plymouth Harbor, 272; Historic Swords, 274; Governor Edward
Winslow, 277; Pilgrim relics, 279; Governor Josiah Winslow, 282.
AUTOGRAPHS: John Smyth, 257; John Robinson, 259; Robert Browne,
261; Francis Johnson, 261; Signatures of Mayflower Pilgrims
(William Bradford, Myles Standish, William Brewster, John
Alden, John Howland, Edward Winslow, George Soule, Francis
Eaton, Isaac Allerton, Samuel Fuller, Peregrine White, Resolved
White, John Cooke), 268; Dorothy May, 268; William Bradford,
268; Thomas Cushman, 271; Alexander Standish, 273; James Cole,
senior, 273; Signers of the Patent, 1621 (Hamilton, Lenox,
Warwick, Sheffield, Ferdinando Gorges), 275; Governors of
Plymouth Colony (William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Thomas
Prence, Thomas Hinckley, Josiah Winslow), 278.
CRITICAL ESSAY 283
ILLUSTRATIONS: Extract from Bradford’s History, 289; First
page, Plymouth Records, 292.
AUTOGRAPH: Nathaniel Morton, 291.
CHAPTER IX.
NEW ENGLAND. _Charles Deane_ 295
ILLUSTRATIONS: Dudley’s map of New England (1646), 303;
Alexander’s map (1624), 306; John Wilson, 313; Dr. John Clark,
315; John Endicott, 317; Hingham meeting-house, 319; Joseph
Dudley, 320; John Winthrop of Connecticut, 331; John Davenport,
332; Map of Connecticut River (1666), 333.
AUTOGRAPHS: William Blaxton, 311; Samuel Maverick, 311; Thomas
Walford, 311; Mathew Cradock, 312; John Wilson, 313; Quaker
autographs, 314; John Endicott, 317; Colonial ministers of
1690 (Charles Morton, James Allen, Michael Wigglesworth,
Joshua Moody, Samuel Willard, Cotton Mather, Nehemiah Walter),
319; Joseph Dudley, 320; Abraham Shurt, 321; Thomas Danforth,
326; Thomas Hooker, 330; John Haynes, 331; John Winthrop, the
younger, 331; John Allyn, 335; William Coddington, 336; Samuel
Gorton, 336; Narragansett proprietors (Simon Bradstreet, Daniel
Denison, Thomas Willett, Jno. Paine, Edward Hutchinson, Amos
Richison, John Alcocke, George Denison, William Hudson), 338;
Roger Williams, 339.
CRITICAL ESSAY 340
ILLUSTRATIONS: Seal of the Council for New England, 342; Cotton
Mather, 345; Ship of the seventeenth century, 347; Fac-simile
of a page of Thomas Lechford’s _Plaine Dealing_, 352; James
Savage’s manuscript note on Lechford, 353; Beginning of Thomas
Shepard’s Autobiography, 355.
AUTOGRAPHS: Leaders in Pequot war (John Mason, Israel
Stoughton, Lion Gardiner), 348; Jonathan Brewster, 349;
Nathaniel Ward, 350; Signatures connected with the Indian Bible
(Robert Boyle, Peter Bulkley, William Stoughton, Joseph Dudley,
Thomas Hinckley, John Cotton, John Eliot, James Printer), 356;
Edward Johnson, 358; John Norton, 358; Edward Burrough, 359;
Robert Pike, 359; Benjamin Church, 361; Thomas Church, 361;
William Hubbard, 362; Walter Neale, 363; Ferdinando Gorges,
364; John Mason, 364; Roger Goode, 364; Thomas Gorges, 364;
Connecticut secretaries (John Steel, Edward Hopkins, Thomas
Welles, John Cullick, Daniel Clark, John Allyn), 374.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES; EARLY MAPS OF NEW ENGLAND. _The Editor_ 380
ILLUSTRATIONS: Maps of New England (1650), 382, (1680), 383.
AUTOGRAPH: John Carter Brown, 381.
CHAPTER X.
THE ENGLISH IN NEW YORK. _John Austin Stevens_ 385
ILLUSTRATIONS: Sir Edmund Andros, 402; Great Seal of Andros,
410.
AUTOGRAPHS: Commissioners (Richard Nicolls, Sir Robert Carr,
George Cartwright, Samuel Maverick), 388; Francis Lovelace,
395; Thomas Dongan, 404; Jacob Leisler, 411.
CRITICAL ESSAY 411
NOTES. _The Editor_ 414
ILLUSTRATIONS: View of New York (1673), 416; View of The
Strand, 417; Plan of New York, 418; Stadthuys (1679), 419.
AUTOGRAPH: Thomas Willett, 414.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ENGLISH IN EAST AND WEST JERSEY, 1664-1689. _William A.
Whitehead_ 421
AUTOGRAPHS: King James, 421; Richard Nicoll, 421; Robert Carr,
422; John Berkeley, 422; G. Carteret, 423; Philip Carteret,
424; James Bollen, 428; Edward Byllynge, 430; Gawen Laurie,
430; Nicolas Lucas, 430; Edmond Warner, 430; R. Barclay, 436;
Earl of Perth, 439.
CRITICAL ESSAY 449
NOTE. _The Editor_ 455
ILLUSTRATION: Sanson’s map (1656), 456.
NOTE ON NEW ALBION. _Gregory B. Keen_ 457
ILLUSTRATIONS: Insignia of the Albion knights, 462; Farrer map
of Virginia (1651), 465.
AUTOGRAPH: Robert Evelin, 458.
CHAPTER XII.
THE FOUNDING OF PENNSYLVANIA. _Frederick D. Stone_ 469
ILLUSTRATIONS: George Fox, 470; William Penn, 474; Letitia
Cottage, 483; Seal and Signatures to Frame of Government, 484;
Slate-roof House, 492.
AUTOGRAPHS: William Penn, 474; Thomas Wynne, 486; Charles
Mason, 489; Jeremiah Dixon, 489; Thomas Lloyd, 494.
CRITICAL ESSAY 495
ILLUSTRATIONS: Title of _Some Account_, etc., 496; Title of
_Frame of Government_, 497; Receipt and Seal of Free Society
of Traders, 498; Gabriel Thomas’s map (1698), 501; Seal of
Pennsylvania, 511; Section of Holme’s map of Pennsylvania, 516.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ENGLISH IN MARYLAND, 1632-1691. _William T. Brantly_ 517
ILLUSTRATIONS: George, first Lord Baltimore, 518; Baltimore
arms, 520; Map of Maryland (1635), 525; Endorsement of
Toleration Act, 535; Baltimore coins, 543; Cecil, second Lord
Baltimore, 546.
AUTOGRAPHS: George, first Lord Baltimore, 518; Leonard Calvert,
524; Thomas Cornwallis, 524; John Lewger, 528; Thomas Greene, 533;
Margaret Brent, 533; William Stone, 534; Josias Fendall, 540;
Charles Calvert, 542.
CRITICAL ESSAY 553
AUTOGRAPH: Thomas Yong, 558.
INDEX 563
NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL
HISTORY OF AMERICA.
CHAPTER I.
THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS.
BY CHARLES DEANE, LL. D.
_Vice-President, Massachusetts Historical Society._
“WE derive our rights in America,” says Edmund Burke, in his _Account
of the European Settlements in America_, “from the discovery of
Sebastian Cabot, who first made the Northern Continent in 1497. The
fact is sufficiently certain to establish a right to our settlements
in North America.” If this distinguished writer and statesman had
substituted the name of John Cabot for that of Sebastian, he would have
stated the truth.
[Illustration: SIGN MANUAL OF HENRY VII.]
John Cabot, as his name is known to English readers, or Zuan Caboto, as
it is called in the Venetian dialect, the discoverer of North America,
was born, probably, in Genoa or its neighborhood. His name first
appears in the archives of Venice, where is a record, under the date
of March 28, 1476, of his naturalization as a citizen of Venice, after
the usual residence of fifteen years. He pursued successfully the study
of cosmography and the practice of navigation, and at one time visited
Arabia, where, at Mecca, he saw the caravans which came thither, and
was told that the spices they brought were received from other hands,
and that they came originally from the remotest countries of the
east. Accepting the new views as to “the roundness of the earth,” as
Columbus had done, he was quite disposed to put them to a practical
test. With his wife, who was a Venetian woman, and his three sons, he
removed to England, and took up his residence at the maritime city
of Bristol. The time at which this removal took place is uncertain.
In the year 1495 he laid his proposals before the king, Henry VII.,
who on the 5th of March, 1495/6, granted to him and his three sons,
their heirs and assigns a patent for the discovery of unknown lands
in the eastern, western, or northern seas, with the right to occupy
such territories, and to have exclusive commerce with them, paying to
the King one fifth part of all the profits, and to return to the port
of Bristol. The enterprise was to be “at their own proper cost and
charge.” In the early part of May in the following year, 1497, Cabot
set sail from Bristol with one small vessel and eighteen persons,
principally of Bristol, accompanied, perhaps, by his son Sebastian;
and, after sailing seven hundred leagues, discovered land on the 24th
of June, which he supposed was “in the territory of the Grand Cham.”
The legend, “prima tierra vista,” was inscribed on a map attributed
to Sebastian Cabot, composed at a later period, at the head of the
delineation of the island of Cape Breton. On the spot where he landed
he planted a large cross, with the flags of England and of St. Mark,
and took possession for the King of England. If the statement be true
that he coasted three hundred leagues, he may have made a _periplus_ of
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, returning home through the Straits of Belle
Isle. On his return he saw two islands on the starboard, but for want
of provisions did not stop to examine them. He saw no human beings,
but he brought home certain implements; and from these and other
indications he believed that the country was inhabited. He returned in
the early part of August, having been absent about three months. The
discovery which he reported, and of which he made and exhibited a map
and a solid globe, created a great sensation in England. The King gave
him money, and also executed an agreement to pay him an annual pension,
charged upon the revenues of the port of Bristol. He dressed in silk,
and was called, or called himself, “the Great Admiral.” Preparations
were made for another and a larger expedition, evidently for the
purpose of colonization, and hopes were cherished of further important
discoveries; for Cabot believed that by starting from the place
already found, and coasting toward the equinoctial, he should discover
the island of Cipango, the land of jewels and spices, by which they
hoped to make in London a greater warehouse of spices than existed in
Alexandria. His companions told marvellous stories about the abundance
of fish in the waters of that coast, which might foster an enterprise
that would wholly supersede the fisheries of Iceland. On the 3d of
February 1497/8 the King granted to John Cabot (the sons are not named)
a license to take up six ships, and to enlist as many men as should be
willing to go on the new expedition. He set sail, says Hakluyt, quoting
Fabian, in the beginning of May, with, it is supposed, three hundred
men, and accompanied by his son Sebastian. One of the vessels put back
to Ireland in distress, but the others continued on their voyage. This
is the last we hear of John Cabot. His maps are lost. It is believed
that Juan de la Cosa, the Spanish pilot, who in the year 1500 made a
map of the Spanish and English discoveries in the New World, made use
of maps of the Cabots now lost.
Sebastian Cabot, the second son of John Cabot, was born in Venice,
probably about the year 1473. He was early devoted to the study of
cosmography, in which science his father had become a proficient, and
Sebastian was largely imbued with the same spirit of enterprise; and
on the removal of his father with his family to England, he lived
with them at Bristol. His name first occurs in the letters patent of
Henry VII., dated March 5, 1495/6, issued to John Cabot and his three
sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancius, and to their heirs and assigns,
authorizing them to discover unknown lands. There is some reason to
believe that he accompanied his father in the expedition, already
mentioned, on which the first discovery of North America was made; but
in none of the contemporary documents which have recently come to light
respecting this voyage is Sebastian’s name mentioned as connected with
it. A second expedition, as already stated, followed, and John Cabot
is distinctly named as having sailed with it as its commander; but
thenceforward he passes out of sight. Sebastian Cabot, without doubt,
accompanied the expedition. No contemporary account of it was written,
or at least published, and for the incidents of the voyage we are
mainly indebted to the reports of others written at a later period, and
derived originally from conversations with Sebastian Cabot himself; in
all of which the father’s name, except incidentally, as having taken
Sebastian to England when he was very young, is not mentioned. In these
several reports but one voyage is spoken of, and that, apparently,
the voyage on which the discovery of North America was made; but
circumstances are narrated in them which could have taken place only on
the second or a later voyage.
With a company of three hundred men, the little fleet steered its
course in the direction of the northwest in search of the land of
Cathay. They came to a coast running to the north, which they followed
to a great distance, where they found, in the month of July, large
bodies of ice floating in the water, and almost continual daylight.
Failing to find the passage sought around this formidable headland,
they turned their prows and, as one account says, sought refreshment
at Baccalaos. Thence, coasting southwards, they ran down to about the
latitude of Gibraltar, or 36° N., still in search of a passage to
India, when, their provisions failing, they returned to England.
If the views expressed by John Cabot, on his return from his first
voyage, had been seriously cherished, it seems strange that this
expedition did not, at first, on arriving at the coast, pursue the more
southerly direction, where he was confident lay the land of jewels and
spices.
They landed in several places, saw the natives dressed in skins of
beasts, and making use of copper. They found the fish in such great
abundance that the progress of the ships was sometimes impeded. The
bears, which were in great plenty, caught the fish for food,—plunging
into the water, fastening their claws into them, and dragging them to
the shore. The expedition was expected back by September, but it had
not returned by the last of October.
There is some evidence that Sebastian Cabot, at a later period, sailed
on a voyage of discovery from England in company with Sir Thomas Pert,
or Spert, but which, on account of the cowardice of his companion,
“took none effect.” But the enterprise is involved in doubt and
obscurity.
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH OF HENRY VIII.]
In 1512, after the death of Henry VII., and when Henry VIII. had been
three years on the throne, Sebastian Cabot entered into the service
of Ferdinand, King of Spain, arriving at Seville in September of that
year, where he took up his residence; and on the 20th of October was
appointed “Capitan de Mar,” with an annual salary of fifty thousand
maravedis.[1] Preparations for a voyage of discovery were now made,
and Cabot was to depart in March, 1516, but the death of Ferdinand
prevented his sailing. On the 5th of February, 1518, he was named, by
Charles V., “Piloto Mayor y Exâminadór de Pilotos,” as successor of
Juan de Solis, who was killed at La Plata in 1516. This office gave
him an additional salary of fifty thousand maravedis; and it was soon
afterwards decreed that no pilots should leave Spain for the Indies
without being examined and approved by him. In 1524 he attended,
not as a member but as an expert, the celebrated junta at Badajoz,
which met to decide the important question of the longitude of the
Moluccas,—whether they were on the Spanish or the Portuguese side of
the line of demarcation which followed, by papal consent in 1494, a
meridian of longitude, making a fixed division of the globe, so far
as yet undefined, between Spain and Portugal. On the second day of
the session, April 15, he and two others delivered an opinion on the
questions involved.
In the following year an expedition to the Moluccas was projected,
and under an agreement with the Emperor, executed at Madrid on the
4th of March, Sebastian Cabot was appointed its commander with the
title of Captain-General. The sailing of the expedition was delayed
by the intrigues of the Portuguese. In the mean time his wife,
Catalina Medrano, who is again mentioned with her children a few
years later, received by a royal order fifty thousand maravedis as a
_gratificacion_. On April 3, 1526, the armada sailed from St. Lucar
for the Spice Islands, intending to pass through the Straits of
Magellan. It was delayed from point to point, and did not arrive on
the coast until the following year, when Cabot entered the La Plata
River. A feeling of disloyalty to their commander, the seeds of which
had been sown from the beginning, broke out in open mutiny. He had,
moreover, lost one of his vessels off the coast of Brazil. He therefore
determined to proceed no farther at present, to send to the Emperor a
report of the condition of affairs, and in the mean time to explore
the La Plata River, which had been penetrated by De Solis in 1515. He
remained in that country for several years, and returned in July or
August, 1530. The details of this expedition are described in another
volume of this work and by another hand.
[Illustration: SEBASTIAN CABOT.
[This cut follows a photograph taken from the Chapman copy of the
original. The original was engraved when owned by Charles J. Harford,
Esq., for Seyer’s _Memoirs of Bristol_, 1824, vol. ii. p. 208, and
a photo-reduction of that engraving appears in Nicholl’s _Life of
Sebastian Cabot_. Other engravings have appeared in Sparks’s _Amer.
Biog._, vol. ix. etc. See Critical Essay.—ED.]]
As might have been expected, this enterprise was regarded at home as
a failure, and Cabot had made many enemies in the exercise of his
legitimate authority in quelling the mutinies which had from time to
time broken out among his men. Complaints were made against him on his
return. Several families of those of his companions who were killed
in the expedition brought suits against him, and he was arrested and
imprisoned, but was liberated on bail. Public charges for misconduct
in the affairs of La Plata were preferred against him; and the Council
of the Indies, by an order dated from Medina del Campo, Feb. 1, 1532,
condemned him to a banishment of two years to Oran, in Africa. I have
seen no evidence to show that this sentence was carried into execution.
Cabot, who on his return laid before the Emperor Charles V. his final
report on the expedition, appears to have fully justified himself in
that monarch’s esteem; for he soon resumed his duties as Pilot Major,
an office which he retained till his final return to England.
Cabot made maps and globes during his residence in Spain; and a large
_mappe monde_ bearing date 1544, engraved on copper, and attributed to
him, was found in Germany in 1843, and is now deposited in the National
Library in Paris. This map has been the subject of much discussion.
While in the employ of the Emperor, Cabot offered his services to
his native country, Venice, but was unable to carry his purpose into
effect. He was at last desirous of returning to England, and the Privy
Council, on Oct. 9, 1547, issued a warrant for his transportation from
Spain “to serve and inhabit in England.” He came over to England in
that or the following year, and on Jan. 6, 1548/9, the King granted
him a pension of £166 13s. 4d., to date from St. Michael’s Day
preceding (September 29), “in consideration of the good and acceptable
service done and to be done” by him. In 1550 the Emperor, through his
ambassador in England, demanded his return to Spain, saying that Cabot
was his Pilot Major under large pay, and was much needed by him,—that
“he could not stand the king in any great stead, seeing he had but
small practice in those seas;” but Cabot declined to return. In that
same year, June 4, the King renewed to him the patent of 1495/6, and in
March, 1551, gave him £200 as a special reward.
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH OF EDWARD VI. OF ENGLAND.]
The discovery of a passage to China by the northwest having been deemed
impracticable, a company of merchants was formed in 1553 to prosecute a
route by the northeast, and Cabot was made its governor. He drew up the
instructions for its management, and the expedition under Willoughby
was sent out, the results of which are well known. China was not
reached, but a trade with Muscovy was opened through Archangel. After
the accession of Mary to the Crown of England, the Emperor made another
unsuccessful demand for Cabot’s return to Spain. On Feb. 6, 1555/6,
what is known as the Muscovy Company was chartered, and Cabot became
its governor. Among the last notices preserved of this venerable
man is an account, by a quaint old chronicler, of his presence at
Gravesend, April 27, 1556, on board the pinnace, the “Serchthrift,”
then destined for a voyage of discovery to the northeast. It is related
that after Sebastian Cabot, “and divers gentlemen and gentlewomen”
had “viewed our pinnace, and tasted of such cheer as we could make
them aboard, they went on shore, giving to our mariners right liberal
rewards; and the good old Gentleman, Master Cabota, gave to the poor
most liberal alms, wishing them to pray for the good fortune and
prosperous success of the ‘Serchthrift,’ our pinnace. And then at the
sign of the ‘Christopher,’ he and his friends banqueted, and made me
and them that were in the company great cheer; and for very joy that he
had to see the towardness of our intended discovery he entered into the
dance himself, amongst the rest of the young and lusty company,—which
being ended, he and his friends departed most gently commending us to
the governance of Almighty God.”
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH OF QUEEN MARY.]
Cabot’s pension, granted by the late King, was renewed to him by Queen
Mary Nov. 27, 1555; but on May 27, 1557, he resigned it, and two days
later a new grant was issued to him and William Worthington, jointly,
of the same amount, by which he was deprived of one half his pay. This
is the last official notice of Sebastian Cabot. He probably died soon
afterwards, and in London. Richard Eden, the translator and compiler,
attended him in his last moments, and “beckons us, with something of
awe, to see him die.” He gives a touching account of the feeble and
broken utterances of the dying man. Though no monument or gravestone
marks his place of burial, which is unknown, his portrait is preserved,
as shown on a preceding page.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
UNLIKE the enterprises of Columbus, Vespucius, and many other
navigators who wrote accounts of their voyages and discoveries at
the time of their occurrence, which by the aid of the press were
published to the world, the exploits of the Cabots were unchronicled.
Although the fact of their voyages had been reported by jealous and
watchful liegers at the English Court to the principal cabinets of the
Continent, and the map of their discoveries had been made known, and
this had had its influence in leading other expeditions to the northern
shores of North America, the historical literature relating to the
discovery of America, as preserved in print, is, for nearly twenty
years after the events took place, silent as to the enterprises and
even the names of the Cabots. Scarcely anything has come down to us
directly from these navigators themselves, and for what we know we have
hitherto been chiefly indebted to the uncertain reports, in foreign
languages, of conversations originally held with Sebastian Cabot many
years afterwards, and sometimes related at second and third hand.
Even the year in which the voyage of discovery was made was usually
wrongly stated, when stated at all, and for more than two hundred years
succeeding these events there was no mention made of more than one
voyage.[2]
[Illustration: LA COSA MAP. 1500. _Left side_]
[Illustration: LA COSA MAP. 1500. _Right side_]
[Illustration: RUYSCH’S MAP, 1508.]
I now ask the reader to follow me down through the sixteenth century,
if no further, and examine what notices of the Cabots and their voyages
we can find in the historical literature of this period; and then to
examine what has recently come to light.
John Cabot had died when his son Sebastian in 1512, three years after
the death of Henry VII., left England and entered into the service of
the King of Spain, who gave him the title of Captain, and a liberal
allowance, directing that he should reside at Seville to await orders.
He there became an intimate friend of the famous Peter Martyr, the
author of the _Decades of the New World_, or _De Orbe Novo_, and a
volume of letters entitled _Opus Epistolarum_, etc., a writer too well
known to need further introduction here. Through Martyr, for the first
time, there was printed in 1516 an account of the voyage of the Cabots.
[Illustration: PART OF ORONTIUS FINE’S GLOBE OF 1531, REDUCED TO
MERCATOR’S PROJECTION.]
He published in that year at Alcala (Complutum), in Spain, the first
three of his Decades, addressed to Pope Leo X., the second and third
of which Decades had been written in 1514 and 1515.[3] In the sixth
chapter of the third Decade—of which we give later a page in slightly
reduced fac-simile—is the following:—
“These northern shores have been searched by one Sebastian Cabot,
a Venetian born, whom, being but in manner an infant, his parents
carried with them into England, having occasion to resort thither for
trade of merchandise, as is the manner of the Venetians to leave no
part of the world unsearched to obtain riches. He therefore furnished
two ships in England at his own charges, and first with three hundred
men directed his course so far towards the North Pole that even in the
month of July he found monstrous heaps of ice swimming on the sea, and
in manner continual daylight; yet saw he the land in that tract free
from ice, which had been molten. Wherefore he was enforced to turn his
sails and follow the west; so coasting still by the shore that he was
thereby brought so far into the south, by reason of the land bending
so much southwards that it was there almost equal in latitude with the
sea _Fretum Herculeum_. He sailed so far towards the west that he had
the island of Cuba on his left hand in manner in the same degree of
longitude. As he travelled by the coasts of this great land (which he
named Baccalaos) he saith that he found the like course of the waters
toward the great west, but the same to run more softly and gently
than the swift waters which the Spaniards found in their navigation
southward.... Sebastian Cabot himself named these lands Baccalaos,
because that in the seas thereabout he found so great multitudes of
certain big fishes much like unto tunnies (which the inhabitants
call _baccallaos_)[4] that they sometimes staied his ships. He also
found the people of those regions covered with beasts’ skins, yet not
without the use of reason. He also saith there is great plenty of
bears in those regions which use to eat fish; for plunging themselves
into the water, where they perceive a multitude of these fishes to
lie, they fasten their claws in their scales, and so draw them to
land and eat them, so (as he saith) they are not noisome to men. He
declareth further, that in many places of those regions he saw great
plenty of laton among the inhabitants. Cabot is my very friend, whom
I use familiarly, and delight to have him sometimes keep me company
in mine own house. For being called out of England by the commandment
of the Catholic king of Castile, after the death of Henry VII. King
of England, he is now present at Court with us, looking for ships to
be furnished him for the Indies, to discover this hid secret of
Nature. I think that he will depart in March in the year next
following, 1516, to explore it. What shall succeed your Holiness
shall learn through me, if God grant me life. Some of the Spaniards
deny that Cabot was the first finder of the land of Baccalaos, and
affirm that he went not so far westward.”[5]
[Illustration: STOBNICZA’S MAP, 1512, REDUCED.
[The legends on the map even on the large scale are not clear, and
Brunet, _Supplement_, p. 697, gives a deceptive account of them.
The _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, p. 54, makes them thus: On North
America, “Ortus de bona ventura,” and “Isabella.” Hispaniola is
called “Spagnolla.” On the northern shore of South Ameica, “Arcay”
and “Caput de Sta de.” On its eastern parts, “Gorffo Fremosa,” “Caput
S. Crucis,” and “Monte Fregoso.” At the southern limit, “Alla pega.”
The straight lines of the western coasts, as well as the words “Terra
incognita,” are thought to represent an uncertainty of knowledge. The
island at the west is “Zypangu insula,” or Japan. Mr. Bartlett, the
editor of the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, is of the opinion that the
island at the north is Iceland; but it seems more in accordance with
the prevailing notions of the time to call it Baccalaos. It appears
in the same way on the Lenox globe, and in the circumpolar MS. map of
Da Vinci (1513) in the Queen’s library at Windsor, where this island
is marked “Bacalar.” The eastern coast outline of the Stobnicza map
bears a certain resemblance to the Waldseemüller map which appeared in
the Ptolemy of 1513, having been however engraved, but not published,
in 1507, and Stobnicza may have seen it. If so, he might have
intended the straight western line of North America to correspond to
the marginal limit of the Ptolemy map; but he got no warrant in the
latter for the happy conjecture of the western coast of the Southern
Continent, nor could he find such anywhere else, so far as we know.
The variations of the eastern coast do not indicate that he depended,
solely at least, upon the Ptolemy map, which carries the northern
cut-off of the northern continent five degrees higher. “Isabella” is
transferred from Cuba to Florida, and the northeast coast of South
America is very different. There are accurate fac-similes of this
Ptolemy map in Varnhagen’s _Premier Voyage de Vespucci_, and in
Stevens’s _Historical and Geographical Notes_, pl. ii. See the chapter
on Norumbega, _notes_.—ED.]]
This account we may well suppose to have come primarily from Sebastian
Cabot himself, and it will be noticed that his father is not mentioned
as having accompanied him on the voyage. Indeed, no reference is made
to the father except under the general statement that his parents
took him to England while he was yet very young, _pene infans_. No
date is given, and but one voyage is spoken of. It may be said that
Peter Martyr is not here writing a history of the voyage or voyages
of the Cabots; that the account is merely brought into his narrative
incidentally, as it were, to illustrate a subject upon which he was
then writing,—namely, on a “search” into “the secret causes of
Nature,” or the reason “why the sea runneth with so swift course
from the east into the west;” and that he cites the observations of
Sebastian Cabot, in the region of the Baccalaos, for his immediate
purpose. Richard Biddle, in his _Life of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 81-90,
supposes the voyage here described to be the second, that of 1498,
undertaken after the death of the father, as the mention of the three
hundred men taken out would imply a purpose of colonization, while the
first voyage was one of discovery merely; and thinks that this view is
confirmed by a subsequent reference of Martyr to Cabot’s discovery of
the Baccalaos, in _Decade_ seven, chapter two, written in 1524, where
the discovery is said to have taken place “twenty-six years before,”
that is, in 1498.[6]
[Illustration: PETER MARTYR, 1516.]
A map of the world was composed in 1529 by Diego Ribero, a very
able cosmographer and map-maker of Spain in the early part of the
sixteenth century. It is a very interesting map, but is so well known
to geographers that I need give no particular description of it here.
The northern part of our coast, delineated upon it, is supposed to
have been drawn from the explorations and reports of Gomez made in
1525. It was copied and printed, in its general features only, in
1534, at Venice. A superior copy in fac-simile of the original map was
published by Dr. Kohl in 1860, at Weimar, in his _Die beiden Æltesten
General-Karten von Amerika_.[7] On this map an inscription, of which
the following is an English version, is placed over the territory
inscribed Tierra del Labrador: “This country the English discovered,
but there is nothing useful in it.” See an abridged section of the map
and a description of it in Kohl’s _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 299-307.[8]
[Illustration: THORNE’S MAP, 1527.]
In 1530, four years after Martyr’s death, there was published at
Alcala (Complutum), in Spain, his eight Decades, _De Orbe Novo_, which
included the three first published in 1516, in the last of which,
the third, appeared the notice of Sebastian Cabot cited above. And
it may be added here that the three Decades, including the _De nuper
... repertis insulis_, etc., or abridgment, so called, of the fourth
Decade, printed at Basel in 1521, were reprinted together in that city
in 1533. Of later editions there will be occasion to say something
farther on. Martyr’s notice of Cabot was the earliest extant, and the
republication of these Decades, at different places, served to keep
alive the important fact of the discovery of North America under the
English flag. In some of these later Decades, written in 1524 and 1525,
references will be found to Sebastian Cabot and to his employment in
Spain.
There was published in Latin at Argentoratum (Strasbourg), in 1532,
by James Ziegler,—a Bavarian theologian, who cultivated mathematics
and cosmography with success,—a book relating in part to the northern
regions. Under the head of “Gronland” the author quotes Peter Martyr’s
account of Sebastian Cabot’s voyage:—
“Peter Martyr of Angleria writeth in his Decades of the Spanish
navigations, that Sebastian Cabot,[9] sailing from England continually
towards the north, followed that course so far that he chanced upon
great flakes of ice in the month of July; and diverting from thence
he followed the coast by the shore, bending toward the south until he
came to the clime of the island of Hispaniola above Cuba, an Island
of the Cannibals. Which narration hath given me occasion to extend
Gronland beyond the promontory or cape of Huitsarch to the continent
or firm land of Lapponia above the castle of Wardhus; which thing I
did the rather for that the reverend Archbishop of Nidrosia constantly
affirmed that the sea bendeth there into the form of a crooked elbow.”
This writer evidently supposed that Cabot sailed along the east coast
of Greenland, and the inference he drew from Cabot’s experience, as
related by Martyr, confirmed his belief that that country joined on
to Lappona (Lapland),—an old notion which lasted down to the time of
Willoughby,—making “one continent;” and so he represented it on his
map no. 8, published in his book.[10] He places “Terra Bacallaos” on
the east coast of “Gronland.” He believed that Cabot’s falling in with
ice proved “that he sailed not by the main sea, but in places near unto
the land, comprehending and embracing the sea in the form of a gulf.”
I have copied this from Eden’s English version of Ziegler (_Decades_,
fol. 268), in the margin of which at this place Eden says, “Cabot told
me that this ice is of fresh water, and not of the sea.”[11]
There was published at Venice in 1534, in Italian, a volume in three
parts; the first of which was entitled, _Summario de la generale
historia de l’indie occidentali cavato da libri scritti dal signor don
Pietro Martyre del consiglio delle indie della maesta de l’imperadore,
et da molte altre particulari relationi_.[12]
This, as will be seen, purports to be a summary drawn from Peter Martyr
and other sources,—“from many other private accounts.” The basis
of the work is Martyr’s first three Decades, published together in
Latin in 1516, the original arrangement of the author being entirely
disregarded, many facts omitted, and new statements introduced for
which no authority is given. By virtue of the concluding words of
the quoted title, the translator or compiler appears to claim the
privilege of taking the utmost liberty with the text of Martyr. For
the well-known passage in the sixth chapter of the third Decade, where
Martyr says that Sebastian Cabot “sed a parentibus in Britāniam insulam
tendentibus, uti moris est Venetorum: qui commercii causa terrarum
omnium sunt hospites transportatus pene infans” (“whom being yet but in
manner an infant, his parents carried with them into England, having
occasion to resort thither for trade of merchandise, as is the manner
of the Venetians to leave no part of the world unsearched to obtain
riches”), the Italian translator has substituted, “Costui essendo
piccolo fu menato da suo padre in Inghilterra, da poi la morte del
quale trouandosi ricchissimo, et di grande animo, delibero si come
hauea fatto Christoforo Colombo voler anchor lui scoprire qualche nuoua
parte del mōdo,” etc. (“He being a little boy was taken by his father
into England, after whose death, finding himself very rich and of
great ambition, he resolved to discover some new part of the world as
Columbus had done”).
M. D’Avezac has given some facts which show that the editor of this
Italian version of Peter Martyr, as he calls this work, was Ramusio,
the celebrated editor of the _Navigationi et Viaggi_,[13] etc., and
this work is introduced into the third volume of that publication,
twenty-one years later. Mr. Brevoort has also called my attention to
the fact that the woodcut of “Isola Spagnuola,” used in the early work,
was introduced into the later one, which is confirmatory of the opinion
that Ramusio was at least the editor of the _Summario_ of 1534.[14]
Cabot we know was, during his residence in Spain, a correspondent of
Ramusio,—at least, the latter speaks once of Cabot’s having written to
him, and we shall see farther on that they were not strangers to each
other,—and it is possible that this modification of Peter Martyr’s
language was authorized by him. It is here stated, however, that Cabot
reached only 55° north, while in the prefatory _Discorso_ to his third
volume the editor says that Cabot wrote to him many years before that
he reached the latitude of 67 degrees and a half, and no explanation
is given as to whether the reference is to the same voyage. A fair
inference from the passage above cited from the Italian _Summario_
would be that Sebastian Cabot planned the voyage of discovery after his
father’s death, which we know was not true; as it was equally untrue
that the death of his father made him very rich, for the Italian envoy
tells us that John Cabot was poor. Indeed, the whole language of the
passage relating to Sebastian Cabot is mythical and untrustworthy,
whoever may have inspired it.[15]
I now come to a map of Sebastian Cabot, bearing date 1544, as the
year of its composition, a copy of which was discovered in Germany in
1843, by Von Martius, in the house of a Bavarian curate, and deposited
in the following year in the National Library in Paris. It has been
described at some length by M. D’Avezac, in the _Bulletin de la Société
de Géographie_, 4 ser. xiv. 268-270, 1857. It is a large elliptical
_mappe monde_, engraved on metal, with geographical delineations drawn
upon it down to the time it was made. I saw the map in Paris in 1866.
On its sides are two tables: the first, on the left, inscribed at the
head “Tabula Prima;” and that on the right, “Tabula Secunda.” On these
tables are seventeen legends, or inscriptions, in duplicate; that is to
say, in Spanish and in Latin, the latter supposed to be a translation
of the former,—each Latin legend immediately following the Spanish
original and bearing the same number.[16]
After the seventeen legends in Spanish and in Latin, we come to
a title or heading: “Plinio en el secund libro capitulo lxxix.,
escriue” (“Pliny, in the second book, chapter 79, writes”). Then
follows an inscription in Spanish, no. 18, from Pliny’s _Natural
History_, cap. lxvii., the chapter given above being an error. Four
brief inscriptions, also in Spanish, numbered 19 to 22, relating to
the natural productions of islands in the eastern seas, taken from
other authors, complete the list. So there are twenty-two Spanish
inscriptions or legends on the map,—ten on the first table and twelve
on the second,—the last five of which have no Latin _exemplaires_;
and there are no Latin inscriptions without the same text in Spanish
immediately preceding.
There are no headings prefixed to the inscriptions, except the 1st, the
17th, and 18th. The first inscription, relating to the discovery of
the New World by Columbus, has this title, beneath Tabula Prima, “_del
almirante_.” The 17th—a long inscription—has this title: _Retulo,
del auctor conçiertas razones de la variaçion que haze il aguia del
marear con la estrella del Norte_ (“A discourse of the author of the
map, giving certain reasons for the variation of the magnetic needle
in reference to the North Star”). It is also repeated in Latin over
the version of the inscription in that language. The title to the 18th
inscription, if it may be called a title, has already been given.
The 17th inscription begins as follows: “Sebastian Caboto, capitan
y piloto mayor de la S. c. c. m. del Imperador don Carlos quinto
deste nombre, y Rey nuestro sennor hizo este figura extenda en plano,
anno del nascim^o de nrō Salvador Iesu Christo de MDXLIIII. annos,
tirada por grados de latitud y longitud con sus vientos como carta
de marear, imitando en parte al Ptolomeo, y en parte alos modernos
descobridores, asi Espanoles como Portugueses, y parte por su padre, y
por el descubierto, por donde, podras navegar como por carta de marear,
teniendo respecto a luariaçion que haze el aguia,” etc. (“Sebastian
Cabot, captain and pilot-major of his sacred imperial majesty, the
emperor Don Carlos, the fifth of this name, and the king our lord, made
this figure extended on a plane surface, in the year of the birth of
our Saviour Jesus Christ, 1544, having drawn it by degrees of latitude
and longitude, with the winds, as a sailing chart, following partly
Ptolemy and partly the modern discoveries, Spanish and Portuguese, and
partly the discovery made by his father and himself: by it you may
sail as by a sea-chart, having regard to the variation of the needle,”
etc.). Then follows a discussion relating to the variation of the
magnetic needle, which Cabot claims first to have noticed.[17]
In the inscription, No. 8, which treats of Newfoundland, it says: “This
country was discovered by John Cabot, a Venetian, and Sebastian Cabot,
his son, in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ, MCCCCXCIV. [1494] on the
24th of June, in the morning, which country they called ‘primum visam’;
and a large island adjacent to it they named the island of St. John,
because they discovered it on the same day.”[18]
A fac-simile of this map was published in Paris by M. Jomard, in Plate
XX. of his _Monuments de la Géographie_ (begun in 1842, and issued
during several years following down to 1862), but without the legends
on its sides, which unquestionably belong to the map itself; for those
which, on account of their length, are not included within the interior
of the map, are attached to it by proper references. M. Jomard promised
a separate volume of “texte explicatif,” but death prevented the
accomplishment of his purpose.[19]
[Illustration: PART OF THE SEBASTIAN CABOT MAPPE MONDE, 1544.]
If this map, with the date of its composition, is authentic, it is the
first time the name of John Cabot has been introduced to our notice
in any printed document, in connection with the discovery of North
America. Here the name is brought in jointly with that of Sebastian
Cabot, on the authority apparently of Sebastian himself. He is said to
be the maker of the map, and if he did not write the legends on its
sides he may be supposed not to have been ignorant of their having been
placed there. As to Legend No. 8, copied above, who but Sebastian Cabot
would know the facts embodied in it,—namely, that the discovery was
made by both the father and the son, on the 24th of June, about five
o’clock in the morning; that the land was called _prima vista_, or its
equivalent, and that the island near by was called St. John, as the
discovery was made on St. John’s Day? Whether or not Sebastian Cabot’s
statement is to be implicitly relied on, in associating his own name
with his father’s in the voyage of discovery, in view of the evidence
which has recently come to light, the legend itself must have proceeded
from him. Some additional information in the latter part of the
inscription, relating to the native inhabitants, and the productions
of the country, may have been gathered in the voyage of the following
year. Sebastian Cabot, without doubt, was in possession of his father’s
maps, on which would be inscribed by John Cabot himself the day on
which the discovery was made.
Whatever opinions, therefore, historical scholars may entertain as
to Sebastian Cabot’s connection with this map in its present form,
or with the inscriptions upon it as a whole, all must admit that the
statements embodied in No. 8, and, it may be added, in No. 17, could
have been communicated by no one but Sebastian Cabot himself. The
only alternative is that they are a base fabrication by a stranger.
Moreover, this very map itself, or a map with these legends upon it,
as we shall see farther on, was in the possession of Richard Eden, or
was accessible to him; and one of its long inscriptions was translated
into English, and printed in his _Decades_, in 1555, as from “Cabot’s
own card,”—and this at a time when Cabot was living in London, and
apparently on terms of intimacy with Eden. Legend No. 8 contains an
important statement which is confirmed by evidence recently come to
light, namely, the fact of John Cabot’s agency in the discovery of
North America; and, although the name of the son is here associated
with the father, it is a positive relief to find an acknowledgment from
Sebastian himself of a truth that was to receive, before the close of
the century, important support from the publication of the _Letters
Patent_ from the archives of the State. And this should serve to modify
our estimate of the authenticity of reports purporting to come from
Sebastian, in which the father is wholly ignored, and the son alone
is represented as the hero. The long inscription, No. 17, contains
an honorable mention of his father, as we have already seen; and in
the Latin duplicate, the language in the passage which I have given
in English will be seen to be even more emphatic than is expressed in
the Spanish text. Indeed, in several instances in the Latin, though
generally following the Spanish, so far as I have had an opportunity
of observing, there are some statements of fact not to be found in the
Spanish.[20] The passage already cited concludes thus in the Latin:
“And also from the experience and practice of long sea-service of the
most excellent John Cabot, a Venetian by nation, and of my author [the
map is here made to speak for itself] Sebastian his son, the most
learned of all men in knowledge of the stars and the art of navigation,
who have discovered a certain part of the globe for a long time hidden
from our people.”[21]
Though we are not quite willing to believe that Sebastian Cabot wrote
the eulogy of himself contained in this passage, yet who but he could
have known of those facts concerning his father, who, we suppose, had
been dead some fifty years before this map was composed?
The map itself, as a work of Sebastian Cabot, is unsatisfactory, and
many of the legends on its sides are also unworthy of its alleged
author. It brought forward for the first time, in Legend 8, the year
1494 as the year of the discovery of North America, which the late
M. D’Avezac accepted, but which I cannot but think from undoubted
evidence, to be adduced farther on, is wrong. The “terram primum visam”
of the legend is inscribed on the northern part of Cape Breton, and
there would seem to be no good reason for not accepting this point on
the coast as Cabot’s landfall. The “y de s. Juan,” the present Prince
Edward Island, is laid down on the map; and although Dr. Kohl thinks
that the name was given by the French, and that Cabot may have taken
it, not from his own survey, but from the French maps, I have seen
no evidence of the application of the name on any map before this of
Cabot. Cartier gave the name “Sainct Jean” to a cape on the west coast
of Newfoundland, in 1534, discovered also on St. John’s Day; but this
fact was not known, in print at least, till 1556, when the account of
his first voyage was published in the third volume of Ramusio.
We find no strictly contemporaneous reference to this map, or evidence
that it exerted any influence on opinions respecting the first two
voyages of the Cabots; and the name of John Cabot again sinks out of
sight. Dr. Kohl has called attention to the fact that the author of
this map has copied the coast line of the northern shore largely from
Ribero.
It may be added that the inscription No. 8, on Cabot’s map, has since
its republication by Hakluyt, with an English version by him, in
1589, been regarded as containing the most definite and satisfactory
statement which had appeared as to the discovery of North America,
the date as to the year having been subjected to some interesting
criticisms, to be referred to farther on.
In the year 1550 Ramusio issued at Venice the first volume of his
celebrated collection of voyages and travels in Italian, entitled,
_Delle Navigationi et Viaggi_, etc. This contained, in a discourse on
spices, etc., the well-known report of a conversation at the villa of
Hieronymo Fracastor, at Caphi, near Verona, in which the principal
speaker, a most profound philosopher and mathematician, incidentally
relates an interview which he had, some years before, with Sebastian
Cabot at Seville. Ramusio, who was present, and tells the story
himself, says he does not pretend to give the conversation precisely as
he heard it, for that would require a talent beyond his; but he would
try and give briefly what he could recollect of it. The substance of
Cabot’s story as related, much abridged by me, is this:—
Sebastian Cabot’s father took him from Venice to London when he was
very young, yet having some knowledge of the _humanities_, and of
the sphere. His father died at the time when the news was brought of
the discovery of Columbus, which caused a great talk at the court
of Henry VII., and which created a great desire in him (Cabot) to
attempt some great thing; and understanding, by reason of the sphere,
that if he should sail by the northwest he would come to India by a
shorter route, he caused the king to be informed of his idea, and the
king immediately furnished him with two small ships, and all things
necessary for the voyage, which was in the year 1496, in the beginning
of summer. He therefore began to sail to the northwest, expecting to
go to Cathay, and from thence to turn towards India, but found after
some days, to his displeasure, that the land ran towards the north. He
still proceeded hoping to find the passage, but found the land still
continent to the 56th degree; and seeing there that the coast turned
toward the east, he, in despair of finding the passage, turned back
and sailed down the coast toward the equinoctial, ever hoping to find
the passage, and came as far south as Florida, when, his provisions
failing, he returned to England, where he found great tumults among the
people, and wars in Scotland.
The volumes of Ramusio became justly celebrated throughout the literary
centres of Europe, and the publication of the account of Sebastian
Cabot’s discovery in the first volume attracted the attention of
scholars in England. It will be noticed that Sebastian Cabot here, as
well as in the account in Peter Martyr, is said to have been born in
Venice, and taken to England while yet very young; yet not so young
but that he had acquired some knowledge of letters, and of the sphere.
He speaks here of the death of his father as occurring before the
voyage of discovery was entered upon, for which he had two small ships
furnished him by the king. He says that this was in the year 1496; yet
he speaks of events occurring in England on his return,—great tumults
among the people, and wars in Scotland,—which point to the year
1497. The latitude he reached “under our pole” was 56 degrees; and,
despairing to find the passage to India, he turned back again, sailed
down the coast, “and came to that part of this firm land we now call
Florida.”[22] Many incidents here described could not have occurred on
the voyage of discovery, as we shall see farther on.
We do not know the precise year in which the interview at Seville
between this learned man and Sebastian Cabot was held, but have given
some reasons below for believing that it took place about ten years
before it was printed by Ramusio.[23]
I might mention here another reference to Cabot, in Ramusio’s third
volume, 1556, though of a little later date. In a prefatory dedication
to his excellent friend Hieronimo Fracastor,[24] at whose house the
conversation related in Ramusio’s first volume took place, Ramusio
under date of June 20, 1553, says that “Sebastian Cabot our countryman,
a Venetian,” wrote to him many years ago that he sailed along and
beyond this land of New France, at the charges of Henry VII. King of
England; that he sailed a long time west and by north into the latitude
of 67½ degrees, and on the 11th of June, finding still the sea open,
he expected to have gone on to Cathay, and would have gone, if the
mutiny of the shipmaster and mariners had not hindered him and made him
return homewards from that place.[25]
I have already briefly referred to this letter, in speaking of the
alleged voyage of 1516-17, contended for by Biddle (pp. 117-19), on
which occasion he thinks Cabot entered Hudson Bay. This passage in
Ramusio is mentioned twenty years later by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in
his tract, as we shall see farther on, principally on account of the
high degree of northern latitude reached, 67½°, and where the sea
was found still open.[26] As this is the only account of a voyage which
describes so high an elevation reached, and an immediate return thence
by reason of mutiny, some have supposed that the incidents described
must have occurred on a third voyage, in company with Sir Thomas
Pert. On Cabot’s map of 1544 there is inscribed a coast line trending
westward, terminating at the degree of latitude named.
In 1552 Gomara’s _Historia General de las Indias_ was published at
Saragossa in Spain. In cap. xxxix., under the head of “Los Baccalaos,”
he says:—
“Sebastian Cabot was the first that brought any knowledge of this
land, for being in England in the days of King Henry VII. he furnished
two ships at his own charges, or (as some say) at the King’s, whom
he persuaded that a passage might be found to Cathay by the North
Seas.... He went also to know what manner of lands those Indies
were to inhabit. He had with him three hundred men, and directed
his course by the track of Iceland, upon the Cape of Labrador, at
fifty-eight degrees (though he himself says much more), affirming
that in the month of July there was such cold and heaps of ice that
he durst pass no further; that the days were very long and in manner
without night, and the nights very clear. Certain it is that at sixty
degrees the longest day is of 18 hours. But considering the cold and
the strangeness of the unknown land, he turned his course from thence
to the west, refreshing themselves at Baccalaos; and following the
coast of the land unto the 38th degree, he returned to England.”[27]
Francis Lopez Gomara was among the most distinguished of the historical
writers of Spain. In his _History of the Indies_ his purpose was to
give a brief view of the whole range of Spanish conquest in the islands
and on the American continent, as far down as about the middle of the
sixteenth century. He must have known Cabot in Seville, and might have
informed himself as to his early maritime enterprises, but he seems
to have neglected his opportunity. His book was published after Cabot
had returned to England. On one point in the above brief account,
namely, as to whether the ships were furnished at the charge of Cabot,
he speaks doubtfully. Peter Martyr had said that Cabot furnished two
ships at his own charge, while Ramusio, in the celebrated _Discorso_,
makes Cabot say that the king furnished them. As usual but one voyage
is spoken of; and Sebastian Cabot is the only commander, and is called
a Venetian. His statement contains little new, and is principally a
repetition of Peter Martyr. There is added the statement that the
expedition, on returning from the northern coasting, “refreshed at
Baccalaos.” The degrees given, as to the latitude and longitude reached
in sailing both north and south, appear to be an inference from Martyr
and Ramusio. The incidents here related of course refer to the second
voyage. Gomara, in his history, has other notices of Cabot during his
residence in Spain at a later period, in connection with his account of
the junta at Badajos, and the expedition to the La Plata.
In 1553 Richard Eden, the first English collector of voyages and
travels, published in London a translation “out of Latin into English”
of the fifth book of the _Universal Cosmographia_ of Sebastian Münster,
entitling it _A Treatise of the Newe India_,[28] etc. In the dedication
of the book to the Duke of Northumberland, who had been Lord High
Admiral of England under Henry VIII., Eden says, incidentally, that
“King Henry VIII. about the same year of his reign [i. e. between April
1516 and April 1517], furnished and sent forth certain ships under the
gouvernance of Sebastian Cabot yet living, and one Sir Thomas Pert,
whose faint heart was the cause that the voyage took none effect;” and
that if manly courage “had not at that time been wanting, it might
happily have come to pass that that rich treasure called Perularia,
which is now in Spain in the city of Sivil, and so named for that in it
is kept the infinite riches brought hither from the new-found-land of
Peru, might long since have been in the Tower of London, to the king’s
great honor and wealth of this his realm.”
I find no notice taken of this statement of Eden, at the time, and it
is only when we come down to the publication of Hakluyt’s folio, in
1589, that we see an attempt made to attach some importance to it.
Although deviating a little from the chronological order of this
narrative, I propose here to bring together what I may have to say
concerning this voyage.
Dr. Kohl[29] very properly says that this incidental remark of Eden is
all the original evidence we have on this so-called expedition of Cabot
in 1516, to which some modern writers attach great importance, and by
which great discoveries are said to have been made under Henry VIII.
Hakluyt, in his folio of 1589, p. 515, copies the language of Eden
cited above, and also an abstract from a spurious Italian version of
Oviedo, in Ramusio’s collections, in which that writer is made to say
that a Spanish vessel in the year 1517 fell in with an English rover
at the islands of St. Domingo and St. John’s in the West Indies, on
their way from Brazil; and concludes that this English rover could be
none other than the vessel of Cabot and Pert. But Richard Biddle,[30]
nearly two hundred and fifty years after Hakluyt wrote this opinion,
exploded this theory by showing that Oviedo, in his genuine work,
really gave 1527 as the date of the meeting of the English vessel, as
narrated. Biddle, however, still had faith in Eden’s statement that
an expedition sailed from England in the year indicated, commanded
by Cabot and Pert, but held that it took a northwesterly direction,
and that it was on this expedition that Cabot entered Hudson Bay, and
reached the high latitude of 67½ N. as mentioned by him in a letter
to Ramusio;[31] in which letter Cabot says that “on the 11th of June,
finding still the open sea without any manner of impediment, he thought
verily by that way to have passed on still the way to Cathay, which
is in the east, ... if the mutiny of the shipmaster and mariners had
not hindered him, and made him to return homewards from that place.”
Biddle saw a parallel in the language of Eden as to the “faint heart”
of Pert, and in that of Cabot as to the “mutiny of the shipmaster and
mariners;” not forgetting also similar language in a letter written by
Robert Thorne to Doctor Ley, in 1527, relating to a voyage of discovery
to the west, in which Thorne’s father and another merchant of Bristol,
Hugh Eliot, were participants—which voyage, Mr. Biddle says, was in
1517—that, “if the mariners would then have been ruled and followed
their pilots’ mind, the lands of the West Indies, from whence all the
gold cometh, had been ours.”[32] Mr. Biddle forgets that in the letter
of Cabot to Ramusio, cited above, the writer says that the voyage of
which he is here speaking was made in the reign of Henry VII., who died
in 1509, seven or eight years before the date which Biddle assigns to
the alleged Cabot and Pert voyage.
Dr. Kohl, who has very learnedly and at great length examined the
claims for this voyage of 1516-17,[33] has little confidence that
any such expedition actually sailed. Eden says the voyage “took none
effect,” which may mean that the expedition never sailed. It seems
also very improbable that Cabot, so recently domiciled in Spain, where
he was occupying an honorable position, should leave it all now and
re-enter the service of England, by whose Government he had apparently
for so many years been neglected. No English or Spanish writer mentions
his leaving Spain at this time.[34]
In 1555 there appeared in London the first collection in English of
the “results of that spirit of maritime enterprise which had been
everywhere awakened by the discovery of America.” The book was edited
by Richard Eden,—just mentioned as the translator of the fifth book
of Munster, in 1553,—and consisted of translations from foreign
writers, principally Latin, Spanish, and Italian, of travels by sea
and land, largely relating to discoveries in the New World. The book
was entitled, _The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India_, etc.,
inasmuch as one hundred and sixty-six folios out of three hundred and
seventy-four, which the book contains, consist of the first three
Decades of Peter Martyr, and an epitome of the fourth Decade first
issued at Basle, in 1521. Then follow abstracts of Oviedo, Gomara,
Ramusio, Ziegler, Pigafeta, Munster, Bastaldus, Vespucius, and several
others. Some of the voyages are original and were drawn up by Eden’s
own hand. It is a very desirable book to possess; and though Eden was
a clumsy editor, not always correct in his translations, and did not
always make it clear whether he or his author was speaking, we are
grateful to him for the book. An enthusiastic tribute is paid to Eden
and his book by Richard Biddle,[35] who sets him off by an invidious
comparison with Richard Hakluyt, whom he studiously depreciates. Eden
was apparently a devoted Catholic, and was a spectator of the public
entry of Philip and Mary into London in 1554. He says that the splendid
pageant as it passed before him inspired him to enter upon some work
which he might in due season offer as the result of his loyalty, and
“crave for it the royal blessing.”[36] In his preface to the reader
Eden gives a brief review of ancient history, and coming down to the
time of the conquest of the Indies by Spain he eulogizes the conduct of
that nation towards the natives, particularly in having so effectually
labored for their conversion. His language is one continued eulogy of
the Spaniards. He urges England to submit to King Philip, of whom he
says:—
“Of his behavior in England, his enemies (which canker virtue never
lacked),—they, I say, if any such yet remain,—have greatest cause
to report well, yea so well, that if his natural clemency were not
greater than was their unnatural indignation, they know themselves
what might have followed.... Being a lion he behaved himself as a
lamb, and struck not his enemy having the sword in his hand. Stoop,
England, stoop, and learn to know thy lord and master, as horses and
other brute beasts are taught to do!”
He earnestly desires to see the Christian religion enlarged, and urges
his countrymen to follow here the example of the Spaniards in the New
World. He says:—
“I am not able, with tongue or pen, to express what I conceive
hereof in my mind, yet one thing I see which enforseth me to speak,
and lament that the harvest is so great and the workmen so few. The
Spaniards have showed a good example to all Christian nations to
follow. But as God is great and wonderful in all his works, so beside
the portion of land pertaining to the Spaniards (being eight times
bigger than Italy, as you may read in the last book of the second
Decade), and beside that which pertaineth to the Portugals, there
yet remaineth another portion of that main land reaching toward the
northeast, thought to be as large as the other, and not yet known
but only by the sea-coasts, neither inhabited by any Christian men;
whereas, nevertheless, (as writeth Gemma Phrisius) in this land
there are many fair and fruitful regions, high mountains, and fair
rivers, with abundance of gold, and diverse kinds of beasts. Also
cities and towers so well builded, and people of such civility,
that this part of the world seemeth little inferior to our Europe,
if the inhabitants had received our religion. They are witty people
and refuse not bartering with strangers. These regions are called
Terra Florida and Regio Baccalearum or Bacchallaos, of the which you
may read somewhat in this book in the voyage of that worthy old man
yet living, Sebastian Cabot, in the vi. book of the third Decade.
But Cabot touched only in the north corner, and most barbarous part
thereof, from whence he was repulsed with ice in the month of July.
Nevertheless, the west and south parts of these regions have since
been better searched by other, and found to be as we have said
before.... How much therefore is it to be lamented, and how greatly
doth it sound to the reproach of all Christendom, and especially to
such as dwell nearest to these lands (as we do), being much nearer
unto the same than are the Spaniards (as within xxv days sailing
and less),—how much, I say, shall this sound unto our reproach and
inexcusable slothfulness and negligence, both before God and the
world, that so large dominions of such tractable people and pure
gentiles, not being hitherto corrupted with any other false religion
(and therefore the easier to be allured to embrace ours), are now
known unto us, and that we have no respect neither for God’s cause nor
for our own commodity, to attempt some voyages into these coasts, to
do for our parts as the Spaniards have done for theirs, and not ever
like sheep to haunt one trade, and to do nothing worthy memory among
men or thanks before God, who may herein worthily accuse us for the
slackness of our duty toward him.”
The few voyages of discovery made by the English in the first part of
the sixteenth century, either by the authority of the Government or on
private account, were productive of little results; and when Sebastian
Cabot finally returned to England from Spain, in 1547 or 1548, his
influence was engaged by sundry merchants of London, who were seeking
to devise some means to check the decay of trade in the realm, by the
discovery of a new outlet for the manufactured products of the nation.
The result was the sending off the three vessels under Willoughby,
in May, 1553, to the northeast, and finally the incorporation of the
merchant adventurers, with Cabot as governor.
In Richard Eden’s long address to the reader prefixed to his
translation of the fifth Book of Sebastian Münster, written probably
before the Willoughby expedition had been heard from, he speaks of “the
attempt to pass to Cathay by the North East, which some men doubt, as
the globes represent it all land north, even to the north pole.” In
his preface to his _Decades_, cited above, written two years later, we
have seen that he urges the people of England to turn their attention
in the old direction, and to take possession of the waste places still
unoccupied by any Christian people; which regions be says are called
Terra Florida and Regio Baccalearum. These offer a large opportunity
for traffic as a remedy for the stagnation of trade under which England
is suffering, and a wide field for the Christian missionary.
The reader will have noticed, in the above extract, that Eden says
that Sebastian Cabot “touched only in the north corner and most
barbarous part” of the region which he is urging his countrymen to take
possession of, “from whence he was repulsed with ice in the month of
July.”
Eden’s _Decades_ placed before the English reader for the first time
the several notices of Sebastian Cabot, of which mention has been here
made; namely, by Martyr, Ramusio, Gomara, and the brief Commentary
by Ziegler. And the fact that this large unoccupied territory at the
west, which Eden here urges the English Government and people to take
possession of, was discovered by Cabot for the English nation, could
not fail in time to produce its fruit upon the English mind.
Sebastian Cabot, as we have seen, was living in England at the time
Richard Eden published his book, and a very old man. Eden appears
to have been on terms of acquaintance with him, if not of intimacy;
and unless the infirmities of years weighed too heavily upon his
faculties, Cabot might have been able to impart much information to
one so curious and eager as Eden was to gather up details. Eden more
than once speaks of what Sebastian Cabot told him. In the margin of
folio 255, where is a report of the famous conversation concerning
Sebastian Cabot, extracted from Ramusio, in which Cabot is spoken of as
“a Venetian born,” Eden says: “Sebastian Cabot told me that he was born
in Brystowe, and that at iiii years old he was carried with his father
to Venice, and so returned again into England with his father, after
certain years, wherby he was thought to have been born in Venice.” This
was a bad beginning on the part of Eden as an interviewer; that is to
say, the truth was not reached.
Sebastian Cabot, if he had been asked, might have told Eden much more.
Why did not Eden hand in a list of questions? Why did he not submit to
him a proof-sheet of the story from Ramusio, which we know contains so
many errors, and ask him to correct it, so that the world might have
a true account of the discovery of North America? What an excellent
opportunity was lost to Cabot for printing here under the auspices
of Eden all those maps and discourses which Hakluyt, at a later
period, tells us were in the custody of the worshipful Master William
Worthington, who was very willing to have them overseen and published,
but which have never yet seen the light![37]
I have already called attention to the fact that Eden had a copy of
Cabot’s map, and translated one of the legends upon it,—that relating
to the River La Plata, no. vii.[38]
About this time, or perhaps a few years earlier, there was painted in
England a portrait of Sebastian Cabot, supposed for many years to have
been done by Holbein, whose death has usually been referred to the year
1554, though recent investigations have rendered it probable that he
died eleven years before. The first notice of this portrait which I
have seen is in Purchas.[39] A minute description of it, with a notice
of its disappearance from Whitehall, where it hung for many years, is
given by Mr. Biddle,[40] who subsequently purchased the picture in
England and brought it to this country, where in 1845 it was burned
with his house and contents, in Pittsburg, Pa. Two excellent copies of
it, however, had fortunately been taken, one of which, by the artist
Chapman, is in the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Society,[41]
and the other in that of the New York Historical Society.[42] The
portrait was painted after Cabot had returned to England; and it is
said, I know not on what authority, to have been painted for King
Edward VI., who died in 1553. Cabot lived some five years longer.
The picture represents Cabot as a very old man. It has the following
inscription upon it:[43]—
EFFIGIES· SEBASTIANI CABOTI
ANGLI· FILII· JOHÃNIS· CABOTI· VENE
TI· MILITIS· AVRATI· PRIMI· INVĒT
ORIS· TERRÆ NOVIÆ SUB HERICO VII. ANGL
LÆ REGE.
A peculiar interest is attached to this inscription, from the
circumstance that it must probably have proceeded from Sebastian Cabot
himself; that is to say, the facts intended to be embodied in it by
the artist or herald could best come from him. But being clumsily
expressed, it is uncertain whether the son or the father was intended
to be represented as the knight and discoverer. With the exception
of the legend on the map already mentioned, it is the only direct
testimony presumably from Sebastian himself as to the principal fact
involved. That joins both the father and the son as discoverers. Here
the honor is given to but one of them, but unhappily the only statement
clearly expressed is that Sebastian Cabot is an Englishman and the son
of John Cabot, a Venetian. Which was the knight and the discoverer no
one can tell certainly from the legend itself. The inscription has
been the subject of considerable discussion and even controversy.[44]
Humboldt has a brief note on the subject,[45] in which he says: “Il
importe de savoir si c’est le père Jean ou le fils Sebastien qui est
désigné comme celui auquel la décoverte est due. Si c’était le fils,
Holbein aurait probablement placé le mot _filii_ après _Veneti_. Il
aurait écrit: _Effigies_ Seb. Caboti Angli, Joannis Caboti Veneti
filii....” We now know from other evidence that John Cabot was the
discoverer of North America. He may have been accompanied by his son,
Sebastian, but it would have been a pleasant fact to have the testimony
of the son to his father’s honor clearly expressed, as may have been
intended in this awkward composition. Sebastian Cabot has been the
sphinx of American history for over three hundred years, and this
inscription over his head in his picture does not tend to divest him
of that character. There has as yet appeared no other evidence to show
that either John Cabot or Sebastian was ever knighted. Purchas[46]
insists on giving the title of “Sir” to the son. Laying aside the
question as to the interpretation of the inscription on the portrait,
there is sufficient evidence elsewhere to show that Sebastian Cabot
was not a knight. In two documents to be more particularly noticed in
another place,—one dated in May, 1555, and the other in May, 1557, the
latter dated not long before Sebastian Cabot’s death,—relating to a
pension granted to him by the Crown of England, he is styled “Armiger,”
a dignity below that of knight and equivalent to that of esquire. See
Rymer’s _Fœdera_, vol. xv. pp. 427 and 466.
In 1558 there was published in Paris a book entitled _Les Singularitez
de la France Antarcktique_, etc., by F. André Thevet, the French
Cosmographer.[47] This writer is held in little estimation, and
deservedly so. In chapter lxxiv. fol. 145, _verso_, in speaking of the
Baccalaos, is this passage:—
“It was first discovered by Sebastian Babate, an Englishman, who
persuaded Henry VII., King of England, that he could go easily this
way by the North to Cathay, and that he would thus obtain spices
and other articles from the Indies equally as well as the King of
Portugal; added to which he proposed to go to Peru and America, to
people the country with new inhabitants, and to establish there a
New England, which he did not accomplish. True it is he put three
hundred men ashore, somewhere to the north of Ireland, where the cold
destroyed nearly the whole company, though it was then the month of
July. Afterwards Jaques Cartier (as he himself has told me) made two
voyages to that country in 1534 and 1535.”
This passage it will be seen is a mere perversion of that in Gomara,
changing the name of Cabot to Babate, and Iceland to Ireland, but
adding the wholly unauthorized statement that the three hundred men
were put ashore and perished in the cold. Mr. Biddle,[48] who calls
attention to this writer’s recklessness, says that this is a “random
addition suggested by the reference in Gomara to one of the objects
of Cabot’s expedition, and the reasons which compelled him to turn
back.” On the other hand, he thinks it possible that Thevet “derived
his information from Cartier, who would be very likely to know of any
such attempt at settlement.” It is not at all likely that Thevet had
any authority whatever for his statement. His mention of Cartier is
probably suggested by seeing in Gomara,[49] immediately following the
extract from him above quoted, the mention of Cartier as being on that
coast in 1534 and 1535. But Thevet’s statement has entered into sober
history, and has been quoted and requoted.
Captain Antonio Galvano, the Portuguese, had died in 1557, leaving
behind him a _Trádado_, a historical treatise, which was published
at Lisbon in 1563. It gives an account “of all the discoveries,
ancient and modern, which have been made up to the year one thousand
five hundred and fifty.” This is a valuable chronological list of
discoveries in which the writer includes, in the latter part, his
own experience. He spent the early part of his life in India, and the
latter part, on being recalled home, in compiling an account of all
known voyages. The Hakluyt Society have published Galvano’s book in
the original, from a copy, believed to be unique, in the Carter-Brown
Library, at Providence R. I. It is accompanied by an English version,
by an unknown translator, long in the possession of Hakluyt, corrected
and published by him, as the title says, in 1601.[50] Hakluyt never
could get sight of a copy of the original edition. On comparing the
texts, several omissions and additions are noticed by the modern
editor. The former are supposed to be due to the inadvertence of
the translator, the latter to Hakluyt, who supplied what he thought
important from other sources; and to him are probably due the marginal
references. The following is the English version of Galvano’s
account[51] of Cabot’s discovery, some omissions having been supplied
by the modern editor:—
“In the year 1496 there was a Venetian in England called John Cabota,
who having knowledge of such a new discovery as this was [viz. the
discovery by Columbus], and perceiving by the globe that the islands
before spoken of stood almost in the same latitude with his country,
and much nearer to England than to Portugal, or to Castile, he
acquainted King Henry the Seventh, then King of England, with the
same, wherewith the said king was greatly pleased, and furnished him
out with two ships and three hundred men; which departed and set sail
in the spring of the year, and they sailed westward till they came in
sight of land in 45 degrees of latitude towards the north, and then
went straight northwards till they came into 60 degrees of latitude,
where the day is eighteen hours long, and the night is very clear
and bright. There they found the air cold, and great islands of ice,
but no ground in seventy, eighty, an hundred fathoms sounding, but
found much ice, which alarmed them; and so from thence putting about,
finding the land to turn eastwards, they trended along by it on the
other tack, discovering all the bay and river[52] named Deseado, to
see if it passed on the other side; then they sailed back again,
diminishing the latitude, till they came to 38 degrees toward the
equinoctial line, and from thence returned into England. There be
others which say that he went as far as the Cape of Florida, which
standeth in 25 degrees.”
It will be seen that the greater part of this is taken from Gomara, and
the writer had also read Peter Martyr and Ramusio, and from the latter
takes his year 1496. One statement,—namely, that Cabot came in sight
of land in 45 degrees north,—is original here, which would almost lead
one to suppose that Galvano had seen the _prima vista_ of Cabot’s map.
It will be noticed, near the beginning of the extract from Galvano,
that John Cabot is said to be the discoverer. Thus it stands in the old
English version as published by Hakluyt, but in the original Portuguese
it reads: “No anno de 1496 achandose hum Venezeano por nome Sebastiāo
Gaboto em Inglaterra,” etc. The substitution of John for Sebastian was
no doubt due to Hakluyt, who also made this marginal note: “The great
discovery of John Cabota and the English.”[53]
In this same year (1563) there was published in London an English
version from the French of Jean Ribault, entitled, _The whole and True
discoverie of Terra Florida_ (_englished the Flourishing Lande_), etc.,
giving an account of the attempt to found a colony at Port Royal in
the preceding year. The translation was made by Thomas Hacket, and was
reprinted by Richard Hakluyt in his _Divers Voyages_, in 1582.[54] In
referring to the preceding attempts at discovery and settlement of
those northern shores, he says:—