edits Lechford, 351;
on the Indian languages, 355;
on Indian names in Connecticut, 368;
on the Constitutions of Connecticut, 369;
_True Blue Laws_, etc., 372;
edits _Connecticut Records_, 375;
edits Williams’s _Key_, 377.
Trusler, John, 457.
Tucker, 322.
Tucker, Daniel, 132.
Tucker, St. George, _Hansford_, 164.
Tuckerman, Edward, edits Josselyn’s _New England Rarities_, 360.
Tulloch, John, _Leaders of the Reformation_, 252;
_English Puritanism_, 252.
Turner, H. E., on Coddington, 377;
_Settlers of Aquedneck_, 377.
Turner, Robert, 435, 441, 477.
Tuttle, C. W., 153, 210;
on John Mason, 364;
on Champernoun, 366;
on the Wheelwright deed, 366;
on New Hampshire history, 367.
Twine, John, 143.
Tyler, M. C., _History of American Literature_, 154, 165.
Tyson, Job R., 508;
_Colonial History_, etc., 505.
Tytler, P. F., _Life of Ralegh_, 122;
_Historical View_, 43.
Uhden, _Geschichte des Congregationalisten_, 384.
Ulpius globe, 214.
Uncas, 368;
his pedigree, 368;
and Miantinomo, 368.
Underhill, Captain John, 327, 349;
_Newes from America_, 348.
Upham, _Ratio disciplinæ_, 359.
Upland, 480, 481, 483.
Upsall, Nicholas, autog., 314.
Utie, Colonel, 548.
Vadianus’ map, 217.
Valentine, David, _History of New York City_, 417;
_Manual of the City of New York_, 414, 415.
Van der Aa’s _Voyages_, 79, 188.
Van Heuvel, _El Dorado_, 126.
Van Keulen, charts, 419.
Van Loon’s _Pascærte_, 382;
_Zee-Atlas_, 382.
Van Meteren, 82.
Varina Neck, 138.
Varkens Kil, 459.
Varlo, Charles, 467;
_The Finest Part of America_, 467;
_Nature Displayed_, 468;
_Floating Ideas_, 468.
Vaughan, R., _English Nonconformity_, 252.
Vaughan, Sir William, 519.
Vaux, Roberts, on Penn’s treaty, 513.
Vaux, W. S. W., 79.
Veech, James, 515.
Venegas’ _California_, 75.
Venetian calendars, 51.
Verrazano, 185, 376;
his sea, 183, 218;
influence on Gosnold, 172;
his map, 194.
Vetromile, _History of the Abnakis_, 184.
Vincent, C., _Vie de Penn_, 506.
Vincent, Philip, 348;
_Late Battell_, 348.
Vines, Richard, 182, 303, 322, 323.
Vinton, J. A., on the Wheelwright deed, 366;
_Giles Memorial_, 365.
Virginia, 127;
(1580), 42;
_True Declaration_, etc., 81;
_Declaration of the State of the Colony_, 81;
_Good Speed to_, 81;
_New Life of_, 81;
named by Elizabeth, 110, 153;
map of, by White, 124;
map of “Ould Virginia”, 124;
earliest map, 124;
De Laet’s map (1630), 125;
Farrer map, 464, 465;
other maps, 167;
charter of 1609, 133;
first legislature, 143;
constitution (1621), 145;
massacre (1622), 145, 163;
massacre (1644), 147;
under the Commonwealth, 148;
Bacon’s Rebellion, 151;
“convict” emigrants, 152, 160;
Indian names in, 153;
the early patents, 153;
authorities on the history of, 153;
_Laws Divine_, 156;
bounds of, 159;
_Colonial Records_, 159;
lists of arrivals, 160;
destruction of archives, 160;
families, 160;
county and parish records preserved, 161;
_Calendar of State Papers_, 161;
histories of, 164, 165;
boundary disputes, 167;
_in America Richly Valued_, 168;
disputes with Maryland, 554;
Northern Colony of, 295, 342;
Southern Colony of, 295.
_See_ Jamestown, Roanoke, Smith.
“Virginia”, pinnace, 177.
Virginia Company, 143;
seal, 140, 143;
charter annulled, 146;
records, 158;
silk-worm culture, 158.
_Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine_, 164.
_Virginia Historical Reporter_, 160, 162, 168.
Virginia Historical Society, 168.
“Virginia Merchant”, ship, 148.
_Virginia’s Cure_, 157.
Viscaino’s map, 75.
Visscher, map of New England, 382;
_Atlas Minor_, 417;
map of New York, 418.
Vitellus, 104.
Vullieum, L., _William Penn_, 506.
Waddington, John, _Track of the Hidden Church_, 285, 288;
_Congregational History_, 285, 288.
Wade, Robert, 494.
Wagenaer, Luke, 207.
Walckenaer’s _Catalogue_, 8.
Waldo, Richard, 132.
Waldo Patent, 191.
Walford, Thomas, autog., 311.
Waldron, Resolved, 466, 549.
Waldseemüller map (1507-13), 14.
Walker, John, 187;
in Norumbega, 171.
Wallace, J. W., 514, 516;
on William Bradford, 515.
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 86.
Walter, Nehemiah, autog., 319.
Waterhouse, Edward, his _Declaration_, 163.
Wampanoags, 274.
Wamsutta, 282.
Ward, Edward, _Trip to New England_, 373.
Ward, Nathaniel, autog., 350;
_Body of Liberties_, 350;
_Simple Cobler_, 350.
Ward, Townsend, 492, 509.
Ware, William, _Memoir of Nathaniel Bacon_, 164.
Warham, Rev. John, 330.
Warne, Thomas, 435.
Warner, Charles D., _Study of John Smith_, 162.
Warner, C. L., 516.
Warner, Edmond, autog., 430.
Warren, Henry, 365.
Warrosquoyoke, 147.
Warwick, Earl of, 86, 308, 309, 342, 354, 369;
autog., 275;
grants to, 370;
and the Council for New England, 370.
Warwick (Rhode Island), 337.
“Warwick”, ship, 327, 363.
Warwick’s foreland, 90, 91.
Washburn, Emory, _Judicial History of Massachusetts_, 363.
Washburn, John D., 75.
Watson, J. F., _Annals of Philadelphia_, 509;
on Penn’s treaty, 513;
_Olden Times in New York_, 416.
Watson, Thomas, 154.
Wattes, John, 114.
Waugh, Dorothy, autog., 314.
Waymouth, Captain George, 91, 174, 189;
autog., 91;
authorities, 189.
Webb, Maria, _The Penns and Peningtons_, 507.
Webster, Daniel, on the Pilgrims, 293.
Webster, Noah, edits _Winthrop’s Journal_, 357.
Weehawken, 422.
Weems’s _Life of Penn_, 509.
Weir, R. W., picture of the Pilgrims at Delfthaven, 293.
Weiss, L. H., 502.
“Welcome”, ship, 482.
Welde, Thomas, _Short Story_, etc., 349, 351;
_Bay Psalm Book_, 350.
Welles, Thomas, autog., 374.
Wells (Maine), 324.
Welsh Barony (Pennsylvania), 482.
Welsh in Pennsylvania, 482, 515.
Wenman, Sir Ferdinand, 136.
Wessagusset, 304.
West, Benjamin, picture of Penn’s Treaty, 513.
West, Francis, 132, 134, 143, 146;
admiral of New England, 303.
West India Company, 385, 389, 422.
West Jersey, 432;
concessions, etc., 432;
local government, 440;
_Records_, 452;
Quakers in, 473;
Penn’s interest in, 476;
map of, 501.
_See_ New Jersey.
West, John, 147;
autog., 164.
West, Robert, 435.
West, Thomas, Lord De la Warre, 133.
_See_ De la Warre.
Westcott, _History of Philadelphia_, 502.
Westcott, Thompson, 509.
Westland, Nathaniel, 451.
Westminster, Treaty of, 398.
Weston, P. C. J., _Documents of South Carolina_, 186, 558.
Weston, Thomas, 266, 267, 304;
settles at Weymouth, 278, 311.
Westover manuscripts, 159.
Wethersfield (Connecticut), 330.
Weymouth (Massachusetts), 278, 311.
Wharton, Thomas I., 515.
Whiddon, Jacob, 116.
Wheeler, _History of North Carolina_, 124.
Wheeler, G. A., _History of Brunswick_, 365;
_History of Castine_, 365.
Wheelwright, John, memoir of, 366;
at Exeter, 329;
deed of New Hampshire, controversy over, 366, 368.
Whitaker, Alexander, 137, 138, 141;
_Good Newes from Virginia_, 81, 157.
White, Father Andrew, 554;
_Relatio itineris_, 553, 554.
White, Christopher, 441.
White, D. A., _New England Congregationalism_, 255.
White, Henry, on New Haven Colony, 375.
White, John (governor), views in Virginia, 113;
governor, 113;
his drawings engraved by De Bry, 123, 164;
his map of Virginia, 124, 183.
White, Rev. John, 311.
White, John, of Dorchester, _Planter’s Plea_, 346.
White, John, of Pennsylvania, 488.
White, Peregrine, autog., 268;
his chest, 278.
White, Resolved, autog., 268.
Whitehead, George, 442.
Whitehead, W. A., “The English in East and West Jersey”, 421;
_East Jersey under the Proprietary Government_, 454;
_Documents relating to New Jersey_, 454;
_Index to Colonial Documents_, 455;
_History of Perth Amboy_, 455.
Whitfield, Rev. Henry, 355;
_The Light Appearing_, 335;
_Strength out of Weakness_, 355.
Whiting, John, _Truth and Innocency Defended_, 359.
Whiting, John, _Catalogue of Friends’ Books_, 504.
Whitmore, William H., _American Genealogist_, 292;
_Peter Pelham_, 345;
edits _Andros Tracts_, 362;
his chapter on Andros in the _Memorial History of Boston_, 362.
Whitson Bay, 174.
Whittier, J. G., _Pennsylvania Pilgrim_, 491.
Wickham, Rev. William, 141, 143.
Wiggin, Thomas, 326.
Wigglesworth, Michael, autog., 319.
Wilberforce, Samuel, _Episcopal Church in America_, 286.
Wilcox, Thomas, 435.
Wilkinson, William, 128.
Willard, Samuel, autog., 319.
Willes, Richard, 35;
edits Eden’s Peter Martyr as _History of Travayle_, 204.
Willett, Thomas, autog., 338, 414;
mayor of New York, 414;
his family, 414.
William and Mary College founded, 144, 160.
William of Orange, 396;
invited to England, 410.
Williams, Captain, on the Maine coast, 179.
Williams, Dr. Daniel, his library, 245.
Williams, Edward, _Virgo triumphans_, 168.
Williams, Francis, 328, 329.
Williams, George W., _Negro Race in America_, 168.
Williams, John Foster, 190.
Williams, Roger, in his youth, 242;
at Plymouth, 290;
views on civil polity, 290;
settles Rhode Island, 335, 336;
goes to England, 337;
autog., 339;
his _Key_, 355, 377;
lives of, 378;
deed from the Indians, 379;
letters, 377, 378;
letter to George Fox, 378;
banished from Massachusetts, 378;
_Christenings make not Christians_, 378;
Charter obtained by, 379.
_See_ Rhode Island.
Williamson, _History of North Carolina_, 124.
Williamson, W. D., historical labors, 208;
_History of Maine_, 364.
Willis, William, 209, 210;
_History of Portland_, 365;
_Bibliography of Maine_, 365.
Willoughby’s expedition, 30.
Wills, Daniel, 441.
Wilson, John, first minister of Boston, 312;
portrait, 313;
autog., 313.
Wincob, John, 265.
Winder, Samuel, 443.
Windmill, First, in America, 144.
Windsor (Connecticut), 330, 375;
settled, 368.
Wine made early in Florida and Massachusetts, 61.
Winfield, Charles H., _History of Hudson County_, 456.
Wingfield, Edward Maria, 128;
_Discourse_, 155.
Wingina, 109, 153.
Winslow, Edward, his chair and table, 278;
part author of _Mourt’s Relation_, 290;
_Good News from New England_, 291;
portrait, 277, 293;
at Leyden, 263;
autog., 268, 278;
settles in Marshfield, 273;
his descendants, 277;
accounts of, 277;
_Hypocrasie Unmasked; or, Danger of Tolerating Levellers_, 285, 354;
founds Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, 315,
355;
_New England’s Salamander Discovered_, 355.
Winslow, General John, his sword, 274.
Winslow, Josiah, autog., 278;
portrait, 282.
Winsor, Justin, _The Bradford Manuscript_, 287;
edits _Memorial History of Boston_, 362.
Winter Harbor, 303.
Winter, John, with Drake, 79.
With, John. _See_ White, John.
Winthrop, John, governor, goes to New England, 311;
death, 316, 357;
and the _Short Story_, 351;
_Journal or History of New England_, 255, 357.
Winthrop, John, Jr., governor of Connecticut, 331, 334;
autog., 331;
portrait, 331;
in Connecticut, 369;
charter procured by him, 388.
Winthrop, R. C., on the Pilgrims, 293;
on Sir George Downing, 415.
Wisner, _Old South Church in Boston_, 359.
Witchcraft trial in Pennsylvania, 488.
Wolcott, Roger, 369;
_Poetical Meditations_, 369.
Wolfe, John, 208;
editor of _Linschoten_, 101, 205;
its map, 101.
Wollaston, Captain, 348.
Wolstenholme, Sir John, 94.
Women sent to Virginia, 144, 158.
Wood, Anthony, _Athenæ Oxoniensis_, 204.
Wood, Leonard, his historical labors, 208;
notices of him, 208.
Wood, William, _New England’s Prospect_, 347, 348;
map of New England, 381.
Woodbridge (New Jersey), 425.
Woodbury (Connecticut), 375.
_Woodstock Letters_, 554.
Wooley, Rev. Charles, _Journal_, 420.
Woollen manufactures, 493.
Woolston, John, 447.
Worcester Society of Antiquity, 344.
Worsley, Sir Boyer, 457.
Worthington, William, 7, 31, 44, 51.
Wotton, Thomas, 128.
Wright, Edward, 207;
_The Haven-finding Art_, 208;
_Certain Errors_, 208, 216;
and the Molineaux map, 216.
Wyatt, Sir Francis, 144, 146, 147.
Wyatt, Haut, 144.
Wynne, _British Empire in America_, 509;
_Historical Documents_, 162.
Wynne, Peter, 132.
Wynne, Thomas, autog., 486.
Wynne, Thomas H., 159.
Wytfliet, _Descript. Ptolemaicæ Augmentum_, 184.
Yates, J. V. N., 412.
Yeardley, George, 141, 146;
governor, 142.
Yeardley, Francis, 149.
Yong, Captain Thomas, 458, 558;
autog., 558.
York, Duke of, 310;
patent to, 387, 388;
alienates East Jersey, 403;
grants of New Jersey, 392, 399;
new patent of New York, 399;
becomes James II., 406;
patent (1664), 414, 421, 423;
proposed memorial of, 414;
autog., 421;
grants to Berkeley, etc., 422;
grants to Penn, 480;
Laws, 510, 511.
York (Maine), 326.
Young, Alexander, _Chronicles of the Pilgrims_, 283, 292;
_Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay_, 347.
Yucatan, 201.
Zaltieri’s map (1566), 67.
Zarate’s Peru, 204.
Zeno map, 100;
its influence, 100.
Ziegler, James, on Cabot, 18;
as geographer, 19;
Schondia, 101.
Zipangu, 85.
Zürich archives, letters of the exiled Puritans in, 247.
_Zürich Letters_, 248.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An error in Eden’s translation of a passage in Peter Martyr,
written in 1515, makes him a member of the Council of the Indies.
[2] It will be understood that we now regard it as satisfactorily
settled that the voyage of discovery took place in 1497, followed by a
second voyage in 1498.
I have spoken of the map of the discoveries of the Cabots being made
known to rival courts. In a letter dated Dec. 18, 1497, written from
London by the Abbé Raimondo, envoy of the Duke of Milan to the Court
of Henry VII., recently brought to light, and printed on page 54,
the writer, speaking of the return of John Cabot from his voyage of
discovery, says: “This Master John has the description of the world in
a chart, and also in a solid globe, which he has made, and he shows
where he had landed.” Don Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish Minister, also
writes to Ferdinand and Isabella, in the following year, July 25, 1498,
after the second expedition had sailed: “I have seen the map which the
discoverer has made.”
In the year 1500, the Spanish navigator, Juan de la Cosa, who had
accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to the West in the years
1493-96, compiled a map of the world on which he delineated all he
knew of the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries in the New World.
He also depicted, undoubtedly from English sources, the northern
portion of the east coast of the continent, as is shown by a broad
legend or inscription running along the coast: “Mar descubierta por
Ingleses.” There was also placed at the eastern cape of the coast:
“Cavo de Ynglaterra.” It is the earliest map known on which the western
discoveries are depicted. A few copies of the map are supposed to have
been made soon after its compilation, one of which hung up in the
office of the Spanish Minister of Marine. The map afterwards fell into
neglect and was forgotten. In the year 1832 it was found and identified
by Humboldt, in the library of his friend the Baron Walckenaer, in
Paris. [It is on ox-hide, measuring five feet nine inches by three
feet two inches, drawn in colors, and was afterwards bought in 1850
for 4,020 francs (see Walckenaer _Catalogue_, no. 2,904) by the Queen
of Spain, and is now in the Royal Library at Madrid. See Humboldt’s
appendix to Ghillany’s _Geschichte des Seefahrers Ritter Martin
Behaim_, and the appendix to Kunstmann’s _Entdeckung Amerikas_; also
Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_, 151, 179. This Cosa map is given in part
full-size and in part half-size, in Humboldt’s _Examen Critique_, vol.
v., 1839, but not accurately; and again in connection with Humboldt’s
essay in Ghillany’s _Behaim_, Nürnberg, 1853. This essay was also
issued at Amsterdam in the _Seeskabinet_, with the fac-simile of the
map. The only full-size fac-simile in colors is in three sheets in
Jomard’s _Monuments de la Géographie_, pl. 16; and there are reductions
of the American portion in Stevens’s _Hist. and Geog. Notes_, 1869,
pl. 1 (following Jomard’s delineation); in De la Sagra’s _Cuba_; in
Lelewel’s _Géog. du Moyen Age_, 1852, no. 41. A biographical study
of _Juan de la Cosa_, by Enrique de Leguina, was published at Madrid
in 1877. Cosa died while accompanying Ojedo in December, 1509. Peter
Martyr, in 1514, gave him a high rank as a cartographer. The American
(Asian) part of his map is given in phototype herewith, reduced from
Jomard’s fac-simile.—ED.]
Some have supposed that Cosa drew his whole eastern coast of North
America as a separate and independent continent, entirely distinct
from Asia, on the authority of the maps of the Cabots on which their
discoveries were delineated. Of course, in the absence of the maps or
globes of the Cabots, it is impossible for us to tell precisely what
was delineated upon them, or how much of Cosa’s coast-line was copied
from them; but from whatever source this line was drawn, it must be
evident that it was supposed by Cosa to be the eastern coast of Asia.
Cosa, so far as is observed from the fac-simile of his map,—which is
a map of the world,—drew no east coast of Asia at all, unless this be
it. (See Stevens’s _Notes_ as above, pp. 14, 17; Cf. Kohl, pp. 145,
152, 153.)
I have already said that the discoveries of the English on Cosa’s map
were noted on the northern portion of the east coast of the continent,
and if confined, as they appear to be, to that region, we have no
right to assert that the remaining portion of the east coast-line was
supplied from the Cabots, but rather that it was taken from well-known
existing representations of the east coast of Asia. The map and globe
of the Cabots, already referred to, had laid down upon them the results
of their experience on their first voyage, the voyage of discovery,
in 1497. Of the results of the voyage of 1498, with which Sebastian
Cabot is now more particularly associated, we know but little. Accounts
narrated by others, but originally proceeding many years after the
event from Sebastian Cabot himself, of a voyage to the new-found lands,
have been supposed by modern writers to refer more particularly to this
voyage; and these accounts, as we shall see further on, speak of a run
down the coast to a considerable extent. That the Cabots, or Sebastian
Cabot, should have prepared maps of the second voyage at the time of
its occurrence, as well as of the voyage of discovery, is in every
respect probable. But all these early maps are lost. Perhaps they are
yet slumbering in some dusty archive.
[The Editor cannot derive from the reasons expressed by Stevens (_Hist.
and Geog. Notes_, p. 15) that the coast where the legend is put,
represents the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; for it is not
easy to account for the absence of the characteristics of a gulf, if
“mar,” unaccompanied by “oceanus,” signifies, as Stevens holds, an
enclosed sea; and if so, why is the genuine gulf between Cuba and the
Asian coast called “mar oceanus”?—ED.]
Cosa’s map not having been engraved, or to any extent copied, exercised
but little influence on the cartography of the period, and although the
information relating to the English discoveries depicted upon it could
have come from no other source than the Cabots themselves, their names
were not inscribed upon the map; neither was the legend already quoted
copied upon any one of the maps, relating to the new-found lands,
which soon followed. The enterprising Cortereals, who are supposed
to have seen Cabot’s or Cosa’s map, soon spread their sails for the
West, and the maps of their discoveries, in the regions visited by
them, contained a record of their own name, or inscriptions which have
perpetuated the memory of their exploits. (See vol. iv. of the present
work.) Not so with the Cabots unless we should adopt the improbable
statement of Peter Martyr, in 1515, that Sebastian Cabot gave the name
_Baccalaos_ to those lands because of the multitude of big fishes which
he saw there, and to which the natives gave that name. This subject is
considered in a later note.
Another important map will be briefly referred to here, as it may
possibly have some connection with the Cabots,—that of John Ruysch,
published in the Ptolemy of 1508, at Rome. It is the first engraved
map with the discoveries of the New World delineated upon it. [There
are accounts of this map (which measures twenty-one and a quarter by
sixteen inches) in Harrisse’s _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, p.
108; in the _Catalogue of the John Carter-Brown Library_, i. p. 39; in
Henry Stevens’s _Bibliotheca Geographica_, No. 3058; and reproductions
are given in Humboldt’s _Examen Critique_, v., in his essay on the
earliest maps appended to Ghillany’s _Martin Behaim_; in Stevens’s
_Historical and Geographical Notes_, pl. 2 (cf. _Historical Magazine_,
August, 1869, p. 107); in Santarem’s _Atlas composè de mappemondes
depuis le v^e jusqu’au_ xvii^e, _siècles_; in Lelewel’s _Moyen Age_;
in Judge Daly’s _Early History of Cartography_, p. 32 (much reduced);
and a section is given in Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_, p. 156. A
copy of the original is in the Sumner Collection in Harvard College
Library, and has been used for the fac-simile herewith given.—ED.]
A northeastern coast similar to that on the Cosa map is drawn, but
there is no record on it that the English had visited it, and “Cabo
de Portogesi” takes the place of “Cavo de Ynglaterra,” on the point
of what is now called Cape Race. Concerning John Ruysch, the maker
of the map, who was a German geographer, Kunstmann (_Die Entdeckung
Amerikas_, p. 137) says that he accompanied some exploring expeditions
undertaken from England to the north. Marcus Beneventanus, an Italian
monk, who edited this edition of Ptolemy, and included in it “A new
Description of the World, and the new Navigation of the Ocean from
Lisbon to India,” says: “But John Ruysch of Germany, in my judgment a
most exact geographer, and a most painstaking one in delineating the
globe, to whose aid in this little work I am indebted, has told me
that he sailed from the South of England, and penetrated as far as the
fifty-third degree of north latitude, and on that parallel he sailed
west toward the shores of the East, bearing a little northward (_per
anglum noctis_), and observed many islands, the description of which
I have given below.” Mr. Henry Stevens, from whom I have taken this
extract, thinks that Ruysch may have sailed with the Cabots to the
new-found islands. We know that among the crew one was a Burgundian and
one a Genoese. Beneventanus professed to know of the discoveries of the
English as well as of those of the Spaniards and Portuguese: “Columbi
et Lusitanorum atque Britannorum quos Anglos nunc dicimus.” (Stevens’s
_Hist. and Geog. Notes_, p. 32; Biddle, p. 179.)
In his _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, p. 179, Mr. Biddle calls attention
to a remarkable inscription on this map, placed far at the north, some
twenty degrees above “I. Baccalauras,” namely, “Hic compassus navium
non tenet nec naves quæ ferrum tenent revertere valent” (“Here the
ship’s compass loses its property, and no vessel with iron on board is
able to get away”). Mr. Biddle cites this inscription as showing the
terror which this phenomenon of the variation of the magnetic needle,
particularly noticed by Cabot, had excited. (See Humboldt’s _Examen
Crit._ iii. 31, _et seq._; Chytrœus, _Variorum in Europa Itinerum
Delicicæ_, published at Herborn, in Nassau, 1594, pp. 791, 792.)
Columbus had noticed the declination of the magnetic needle in his
first voyage.
All these places in the new-found lands,—Terre Neuve, Baccalaos,
Labrador, etc.,—named by European visitors to these shores, were
supposed to be sections and projections of the Old World, and to belong
to the map of Asia; and this continued to be the opinion of navigators
and cartographers, advancing and receding in their views, for a number
of years afterward.
[Johannes Myritius in his _Opusculum Geographicum_, published at
Ingoldstadt in 1590, is accounted one of the last to hold to this view.
_Carter-Brown Catalogue_, i. 314. After the discovery by Balboa in
1513 of the South Sea, the new cartographical knowledge took two—in
the main—distinct phases, both of which recognized South America as
an independent continental region, sometimes joined and sometimes
disjoined from the northern continent; while in one, North America
remained a prolongation of Asia, as in the map of Orontius Finæus,
and in the other it presented a barrier to western sailing except
by a northern circuit. An oceanic passage, which seemed to make an
island of Baccalaos, or the Cabot region, nearly in its right latitude
and longitude, laid New England, and much more, beneath the sea. The
earliest specimen of this notion we find in the Polish Ptolemy of
1512, in what is known as the Stobnicza map, one of the evidences
that on the Continent the belief did not prevail that the Cabots had
coursed south along a continental shore. It was a year before Balboa
discovered the Pacific that this map was published at Cracow; and we
are forced to believe that divination, or more credible report, had
told John de Stobnicza what was beyond the land which the Spaniards
were searching. The map is striking, and, singular to say, it has not
been long known. The only copy known of the little book of less than
fifty leaves, which contains it, was printed at Cracow without date
as _Introductio in Ptholomei Cosmographiam_, and is in the Imperial
Library at Vienna; and though there are other copies known with dates
(1512), they all lack the maps, there being two sheets, one of the
Old World, the other of the New, including in this latter designation
the eastern shore of Asia, which is omitted in the fac-simile given
herewith. A full-size fac-simile of the New World was made by Muller of
Amsterdam (five copies only at twenty-five florins), and one is also
given in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, i. 53. We note but a very few
other copies, all however, except one, without the map. One is in the
great library at Munich. A second (forty-three leaves and dated 1512)
was sold by Otto Harrassowitz, a dealer of Leipsic, in 1873, to Muller
of Amsterdam (we suppose it to be the copy described in the latter’s
_Books on America_, iii. 163, which was sold for 240 florins), from
whom it passed into the Carter-Brown Library in Providence. Harrisse,
_Bib. Amer. Vet._, no. 69, says there are two copies at Vienna, one in
the Imperial Library (which has the map, a woodcut), and the other in
the City Library, both without date. One or both of these copies are
said to have forty-two leaves,—Kunstmann, _Die Entdeckung Amerikas_,
p. 130. A fifth was advertised in 1876 by Harrassowitz, _Catalogue_
no. 29, as containing forty-six leaves, dated 1512, but without the
map, and priced at 500 marks. In the same dealer’s _Catalogue_ no. 61,
book-number 56, a copy of forty-six leaves is dated 1511, and priced
400 marks, which is perhaps the same copy with a corrected description.
See also Panzer, _Annales Typographici_, vi. 454. From this it would
appear, as from slight changes said to be in the text, that there were
three separate issues and perhaps editions about 1511-12. Mr. Henry
C. Murphy’s copy of 1513 has no map. A second edition was printed in
Cracow in 1519, but without the map,—_Carter-Brown Catalogue_, no. 60;
Harrisse, _Bib. Amer. Vet._ no. 95. The Finæus map, above referred to,
was a heart-shaped projection of the earth, which appeared in Grynæus’s
_Novus Orbis_, in the edition of Paris, 1532. A fac-simile of it has
been published by Muller, of Amsterdam, and in Stevens’s _Notes_, pl.
4. America occupies the extreme edge of the plate, and is greatly
distorted by the method of projecting. Mr. Brevoort reduced the lines
to Mercator’s projection for Stevens’s _Historical and Geographical
Notes_, 1869, pl. 3; and a fac-simile of this reduction, which shows
also the true Asian coast-line in its right longitude, and curiously
resembling the American (Asian) coast of the map, is given herewith.
See also Stevens’s _Bibliotheca Geographica_, p. 124; _Carter-Brown
Catalogue_, i. 104; Harrisse, _Bibliographia Americana vet._ pp. 294,
297. There are copies of the map also found in the 1540 editions of
Pomponius Mela, and in the _Geografia_ of Lafreri and others, published
at Rome, 1554-72.—ED.]
[3] The first Decade, which was begun in 1493, and completed in 1510,
was printed at Seville in 1511.
[4] _Baccalaos_ is an old ante-columbian name for codfish, in
extensive use in the South of Europe. Humboldt says (Ghillany, p. 4),
“Stockfischland, von Bacallao, dem Spanischen Namen des stockfisches.”
Mr. Brevoort says it is the Iberian name for codfish; see his
_Verrazano the Navigator_, pp. 61, 137, where the etymology of the
word is given. The name is found on many of the early charts. On that
of Reynel, the Portuguese pilot, assigned by geographers to the year
1504 or 1505, it appears on the east coast as “Y dos Bocalhas” (Island
of Codfish). On the chart of Ruysch, 1508, it is seen as applied to a
small island, or cape, as “J. Baccalaurus.” On another Portuguese map
published by Kunstmann, assigned to the year 1514, or a little later,
the name “Bacalnaos” is applied to Newfoundland and Labrador, including
also Nova Scotia. After various fortunes the name became subject to
the limitations which overtook “Norumbega,” and has settled down on a
small island on the east coast of Newfoundland. There appears to be no
evidence, except Martyr’s statement, that Cabot gave the name to the
region he discovered; and it may well be asked on what book or map he
had caused it to be inscribed? There is no such name on Cosa’s map,
the only early record of the Cabots’ discoveries in the New World. The
name was probably applied by the Portuguese. Dr. John G. Kohl, the
distinguished geographer, says that the Portuguese originated the name
of Tierra de Bacalhas (“the stock-fish country”) and gave currency to
it, though the word, like the cod-fishery itself, appears to be of
Germanic origin. See his learned note in full in _Doc. Hist. of Maine_,
i. 188, 189, and compare Parkman’s _Pioneers of France_, pp. 170, 171.
Parkman says: “If, in the original Basque, _baccalaos_ is the word
for codfish, and if Cabot found it in use among the inhabitants of
Newfoundland, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Basques had been
there before him.” The affirmative of this proposition—that the Cabots
had been preceded by the fishermen—has been held by a few writers, but
it is generally believed that the evidence for it is insufficient. Dr.
Kohl says: “That the name should have been introduced by the Cabots is
for many reasons most improbable; and that they should have heard and
received the name from the Indians, is certainly not true; though both
these facts are asserted by Peter Martyr, _De Orbe Novo_, dec. iii.
ch. 6.” (Kohl, pp. 188, 189; and compare his statement on p. 481.) Dr.
Kohl had already said that the name, with some transposition of the
letters, had long been used, before the discoveries of the Cabots and
Cortereals, in many Flemish and German books and documents. It should
be added that the statement of Peter Martyr, that the savages on the
coast visited by Sebastian Cabot called a certain kind of fish found
there in abundance _baccalaos_, is repeated in the legend on Cabot’s
map, published in 1544, as rendered by Hakluyt in his folio of 1589,
p. 511. Indeed, much in the general description of the coast and the
inhabitants, both of the sea and the land, is similar in both accounts,
and indicates one origin.
[In a dispute with England so early as 1672, the Spaniards claimed
a right to fish at Newfoundland by reason of the prior discovery by
the Biscayan fishermen. _Papers relating to the rupture with Spain_,
London, 1672. The latest claim for the Basques’ antedating Cabot in
this region is in C. L. Woodbury’s _Relation of the Fisheries to the
Discovery of North America_, Boston, 1880.—ED.]
[5] This, the earliest notice of Cabot which I have seen in print,
and, written by one so distinguished as Peter Martyr, who had such
rare opportunities for information, is given almost entire. It is from
the quaint English version of Richard Eden, made some three hundred
and thirty years ago, and published in his _Decades_, fol. 118, 119.
The translation has been compared with the Latin text of Martyr, in
the _De Orbe Novo_ of 1516, “Tertie decadis liber sextus,” printed the
year after it was written, and a few redundances eliminated. See M.
D’Avezac’s criticism on some of Eden’s English renderings, in _Revue
Critique_, v. 265.
[6] When Mr. Biddle was issuing the second London edition of his
_Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, in 1832, he cancelled one leaf in the
book, at pages 77, 78, that he might insert a notice of an early
dramatic poem cited by J. Payne Collier in his then recently published
_History of English Dramatic Poetry ... and Annals of the Stage_,
London, 1831, ii. 319. The play was entitled, _A new interlude and a
mery of the nature of the iiij elements declaryinge many proper poynts
of phylosophy naturall and of dyvers straunge landys and of dyvers
straunge effects and causis_, etc. Dr. Dibdin, in his _Typogr. Ant._,
iii. 105, inserts it among the works from Rastell’s press, and in a
manuscript note at the beginning of the copy in the British Museum,
it is said to have been printed by him in 1519. This copy, the only
one known, formerly belonged to Garrick. I saw it in London in 1866,
and collated it with the brief extracts in Collier. It is imperfect;
and, as the colophon is wanting, the imprint, including date, is gone.
Different years have been assigned to the book according as the reader
has interpreted the historical references in it. The citations from
the “Interlude” which follow are taken from the publications of the
Percy Society, vol. xxii. issued in 1848. Among the characters is one
_Experyens_ (Experience), who represents a practical navigator who had
been a great traveller:—
“Right farr, Syr, I have ridden and gone, And seen straunge thynges
many one In Affrick, Europe, and Ynde; Both est and west I have ben
farr, North also, and seen the sowth sterr Bothe by see and lande.
And, apparently pointing to a map, _Experience_ proceeds:—
“There lyeth Iselonde where men do fyshe, But beyonde that so colde
it is No man may there abyde. This see is called the Great Occyan;
So great it is that never man Coulde tell it sith the worlde began
Tyll nowe within this xx. yere, Westewarde be founde new landes That
we never harde tell of before this By wrytynge nor other meanys.
Yet many nowe have ben there; And that contrey is so large of rome,
Muche lenger then all Crestendome, Without fable or gyle; For dyvers
maryners had it tryed, And sayled streyght by the coste syde Above
V. thousande myle! But what commodytes be wythin, No man can tell
nor well imagin. But yet not long ago Some men of this contrey went,
By the Kynge’s noble consent, It for to search to that entent, And
coude not be brought thereto; But they that were they venteres Have
cause to curse their maryners, Fals of promys, and dissemblers, That
falsly them betrayed, Which wold take no paine to sail farther Than
their own lyst and pleasure; Wherfor that vyage, and dyvers other Such
kaytyffes have destroyed. O what a thinge had be than Yf that they that
be Englyschemen Myght have ben furst of all That there shulde have
take possessyon, And made furst buyldynge and habytacion, A memory
perpetuall! And also what an honorable thynge Bothe to the realme, and
to the Kynge, To have had his domynyon extendynge There into so farr a
grounde, Whiche the noble Kynge of late memory, The most wyse prynce,
the VII. Herry, Causyd furst for to be founde, ...”
Percy, in his essay on the Origin of the English Stage, 1767, supposed
this play to have been written about the year 1510, from the following
lines which he referred to Columbus:—
“... Within this xx. yeer Westewarde be founde new landes.”
But Columbus is not named in the play, and the finding of America is
attributed to Americus Vespucius, whose earliest alleged voyage was in
1497:—
“But this newe lands founde lately, Ben callyd America, bycause only
Americus dyd furst them fynde.”
The date ascribed to the play by the writer of the memorandum in it,
1519, would seem to be not far from the truth. But the verses which
speak of the discovery made for the late king, Henry VII., principally
interest us here. They would seem to refer to the Cabots, who made
the only authentic Western discovery for England in that reign. The
whole poem has been reprinted by the Percy Society. See Winsor’s
_Halliwelliana_, p. 8, and references there. Mr. J. F. Nicholls, in his
_Life of Sebastian Cabot_, London, 1869, p. 91, prints these lines,
and thinks “that the Experyens herein depicted was none other than
Sebastian Cabot himself.”
[7] [A sketch of a portion of the North American coast is given in
another chapter. It was reproduced in Sprengel’s translation of Muñoz’s
_Geschichte der neuen Welt_, Weimar, 1795, and separately in his _Ueber
J. Ribero’s älteste weltcharte_, size 50 by 65 centimetres, and shows
the coast from Labrador to Magellan’s Straits. Cf. Humboldt’s _Examen
Critique_, iii. 184. It is also given in Lelewel’s Atlas; in Murphy’s
_Verrazzano_, p. 129; and in De Costa’s _Verrazano the Explorer_, p.
43. The original is at Weimar, with a _replica_ at Rome.—ED.]
[8] I might mention here an interesting map composed by the English
merchant, Robert Thorne, while residing in Seville in Spain, in 1527,
and sent, with a long discourse on cosmography, to Dr. Ley, English
ambassador to Charles V. The map is very rude, and was first published
with the discourse by Hakluyt in his little quarto in 1582. Along the
line of the coast of Labrador is a Latin inscription of which the
following is the English reading: “This land was first discovered
by the English.” Thorne was very urgent—as well in his letter to
Dr. Ley as in a letter to the king, Henry VIII., also published by
Hakluyt—that the English should engage in those maritime discoveries
to the west which the Spaniards and the Portuguese were monopolizing.
[9] In Ziegler’s original work he begins this sentence thus: “Petrus
Martyr mediolanensis in hispanicis navigationibus scribit, _Antoninum
quendam Cabotum_ solventem a Britannia,” etc. This clerical or
typographical error as to Cabot’s Christian name probably arose from
a misreading of Martyr’s language in Dec. iii. lib. 6: “Scrutatus
est eas _Sebastianus quidam Cabotus_.” Eden did not hesitate to
substitute Sebastian for Anthony. As a mystification concerning the
name Antoninum (or Anthony) Cabot, I will add that Mr. Brevoort has
called my attention to the following entry in _Letters and Papers,
Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII._, vol. i. pt. 1, p. 939, doc. 5639,
Nov. 27, 1514: “Patent denization to _Anthony Chabo_, surgeon, native
of Savoy,” with another entry showing that in 1512 an annuity of twenty
pounds was granted to him; and Mr. Brevoort asks the question if
Anthony could have been another son of Jean Cabot, arriving in England
later; and also whether the Cabots might not have come originally from
Savoy? [Ziegler’s title reads: _Syria, Palestina, Arabia, Ægyptus,
Schondia, Holmia_,—the section on Schondia, as he calls the north,
takes folios 85-138; and the last of the eight maps in the book is of
Schondia. See Harrisse’s _Biblio. Amer. Vetus_, no. 170; F. Muller’s
_Catalogue_, 1877, no. 3595. The Schondia section was reprinted in
Krantzius’s _Regnorum Aquilonarium_, etc., Frankfort, 1583. F. Muller’s
_Catalogue_, 1872, no. 844.—ED.]
[10] [It is also so drawn in Ruscelli’s map of 1544.—ED.]
[11] Ziegler’s book is rare and curious; he was a geographer of great
repute. Such books often serve to perpetuate references to more
important works, and to show the erroneous geographical opinions of the
period. A second edition, under a different title, was published at
the same place in 1536. See Harrisse’s _Biblio. Amer. Vetus_, pp. 290,
291, 350, and the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, pp. 106, 120, where will be
found a notice of Ziegler. Biddle, p. 31.
[12] _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, p. 110.
[13] See _Année Véritable de la Naissance de Christophe Colomb_, p. 10,
n. 8.
[14] See also _Relationi del S. Pietro Martira Milanese, Della cose
notabili della provincia dell’ Egitto_, etc., by Carlo Passi, Venetia,
1564.
[15] In a recent letter from Mr. J. Carson Brevoort, the distinguished
bibliographer and historical scholar, of Brooklyn, N. Y.,—who has
kindly communicated for my use his abundant materials relating to the
Cabots, and has laid me under great obligations for aid in preparing
this paper,—he says he has been collating the first part of the
_Summario_ of 1534 with the Latin _Decades_ of Peter Martyr, and he
finds them to differ in a way that no mere translator would have
ventured to effect; that in one instance two books of the Decades are
condensed into a few lines, and the whole worked over as an author
only could do it. The Italian Summary closes at the end of the ninth
book of the third Decade. He thinks that Ramusio, with the edition of
1516 before him, would not have omitted the tenth book. Mr. Brevoort
therefore is led to believe that Martyr himself rewrote in 1515, in
Italian, the three Decades (the last book not having yet been written)
and sent the MS. to a friend in Italy, where it slumbered until 1534,
when it fell into the hands of Ramusio, who committed it to the press.
This is a curious question in bibliography.
It should be added here that the statements of Martyr included in
the Latin Decades of 1516 (afterward published in the entire work
of 1530) are so often referred to by the author, in the course of
his correspondence, that we are bound to accept that edition as the
genuine work. It was published during his lifetime, and received his
_imprimatur_.
[16] The figures of men and animals on the map are colored. I have
recently received from my friend M. Letort, of the National Library in
Paris, a more particular description of the legends of this map than
has hitherto been published.
[17] It is supposed that a new edition of this map was published in
1549, the year after Sebastian Cabot returned to England. The only
evidence of this is contained in a thick duodecimo volume first
published in 1594, at Herborn, in Nassau, edited by Nathan Chytræus,
entitled _Variorum in Europa Itinerum Deliciæ_,—a work consisting of
monumental and other inscriptions, antique legends, and curious bits
of antiquity in prose and verse, picked up by the diligent compiler
in almost every country in Europe. He was in England in 1565; and
apparently at Oxford he saw a document, “a geographical table,” under
which he found several inscriptions in not very elegant Latin, which
he copied and printed in his volume, filling twenty-two pages of the
book. They are wholly in Latin, and correspond substantially with
the Latin inscriptions on the Paris map described above. There is
this difference. The inscriptions here are but nineteen in number,
whereas on the Paris map there are twenty-two, five of them in Spanish
only. No. xviii., of Chytræus, is in the body only of the map, and
in Spanish; and No. xix. appears only in Spanish. In Chytræus each
inscription has a title prefixed, wanting, as a rule, on the Paris
map. There are some verbal variations in the text, owing probably to
the contingencies of transcription and of printing. In the legend, No.
xvii., which has the title, “Inscriptio sev titulus Auctoris,” the date
1549 is inserted as the year in which the map to which the inscriptions
belonged was composed, instead of 1544, as in the Paris map.
[18] I copy here this legend entire, in the original Spanish as on the
Paris map:—
“No. 8. Esta tierra fue descubierta por Ioan Caboto Veneciano, y
Sebastian Caboto su hijo, anno del nascimiento de nuestro Saluador Iesu
Christo de M.CCCC.XCIIII. a ueinte y quarto de Junio por la mannana,
a la qual pusieron nôbre prima tierra uista, y a una isla grâde que
esta par la dha tierra, le pusieron nōbre sant Ioan, por auer sido
descubierta el mismo dia lagente della andan uestidos depieles de
animales, usan en sus guerras arcos, y flechas, lancas, y dardos, y
unas porras de palo, y hondas. Es tierra muy steril, ay enella muchos
orsos plancos, y cieruos muy grâdes como cauallos, y otras muchas
animales, y semeiantemête ay pescado infinito, sollos, salmōes,
lenguados, muy grandes de uara enlargo y otras muchas diversidades de
pescados, y la mayor multitud dellos se dizen baccallaos, y asi mismo
ay en la dha tierra Halcones prietos como cueruos Aquillas, Perdices,
Pardillas, y otras muchas aues de diuersas maneras.”
In the Latin inscription we read that the discovery was made “hora 5,
sub diluculo;” that is, at the hour of five, at daybreak. The Spanish
simply says that the discovery was made in the morning.
[19] [We give reduced a part of the North American coast. Other
representations will be found in Stevens’s _Hist. and Geog. Notes_,
pl. 4; Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_, p. 358; Jurien de la Gravière’s
_Les Marins du XV^e et du XVI^e siècle_, Paris, 1879, with an essay on
the map,—papers originally printed in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
1876; Nicholl’s _Life of S. Cabot_, but inaccurate in the names;
_Hist. Mag._, March, 1868, in connection with Mr. Brevoort’s paper; F.
Kidder’s _Discovery of North America by John Cabot_; Bryant and Gay’s
_United States_, i. 193. Also in Augusto Zeri’s _Giovanni e. Sebastiano
Caboto_, Estratto dalla Rivista Marittima, Marzo, Roma, 1881. The whole
of the map is given, but on a much reduced scale, in Judge Daly’s
_Early History of Cartography_, N. Y., 1879.—ED.]
[20] The following extract of a letter from Sebastian Cabot to the
Emperor Charles V., dated London, Nov. 15, 1554, speaks of a sea-chart
intended for his Majesty, and refers also to the subject of the
variation of the needle, which interested Cabot in an especial manner:—
“With respect to laying down the position of the coast of Guinea
conformably with the variation made by the needle with the pole, if the
King of Portugal falls into an error, I give your Majesty a remedy.
“The same Francisco de Urista, whom I have named before, takes with
him to show to your Majesty two figures which are: a mappe monde
divided by the equator, from which your Majesty can see the causes of
the variation of the needle, and the reasons why it moves at one time
towards the north, at another towards the south pole; the second figure
shows how to take the longitude on whatever parallel a man happens to
be. The results of both these the said F. de U. will relate to your
Majesty as I have here instructed him fully about them, and as he is
himself skilled in the art of navigation. In regard to the sea-chart
(?) which the said F. de U. has, I have written to your Majesty before
about it, that it is of importance to your service, and also [have
written] about a relation in my own handwriting to Juan Esquefe, your
ambassador, to send it to your Majesty. From what I am told, it is in
the possession of the Secretary Eraso. To it I refer you, and I assert
that the chart will be of great service in reference to the division
line agreed upon between the royal crown of Spain and Portugal for the
reasons set forth in my relation.
“I beg you to receive my good will, etc. (Would come in person but
am ill, etc.).”
(_Col. de Doc. Ined_. Madrid, 1843, iii. 512.) Andrés Garcia de
Céspedes, in his _Regimiento de Navigation_, etc., 1606, speaking of
the longitude, p. 137, probably alludes to this very map: “Sebastian
Cabott de nacion Inglés, Pilóto bien conocido, in un Mapa que dio al
Rey de Castilla,” etc.
[21] Cf. the learned dissertations on this map, by Dr. Kohl and M.
D’Avezac, in _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 358-77, 506, 507; and Mr.
Major’s review of the whole question in the _Archæologia_, xliii.
17-42, in 1870.
[Reference may also be made to D’Avezac’s paper in the _Bulletin de
la Société de Géographie_, 4th ser., iv. 266; Asher’s appendix to his
_Henry Hudson_, p. 260; and papers by Mr. Deane himself in _Amer.
Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1867, _Historical Magazine_, November, 1866,
p. 353; and his note in Hakluyt’s _Westerne Planting_, p. 225. Cf.
also Kohl’s _Descriptive Catalogue of those Maps relating to America,
mentioned in Hakluyt’s Third Volume_, p. 11.—ED.]
[22] The geographical designation here employed has been thought by
some to be very indefinite, inasmuch as the Spaniards, who discovered
Florida, subsequently gave that name to the whole country northward
and westward of the territory now bearing that name; but it must be
remembered that that designation was not accepted by geographers of
other nations. After the voyages of Verrazano and Cartier the name “La
Nouvelle France” was applied by French geographers to the territory as
far down as 40° N., and the name was sometimes applied to the whole of
North America. The maps of the Italian geographer, Gastaldi, who made
maps for Ramusio’s third volume, and of Ruscelli, his pupil, confined
Florida to more southern limits; and so did Sebastian Cabot himself,
if the map of 1544 was made by him. Indeed, in the conversation of
these Italian _savans_ at the house of Fracastor, that geographical
status was assumed; that is to say, the country of Cabot’s landfall,
and the land by which he sailed north and south, was not understood
to be Florida, for the statement is that “he sailed down the coast by
that land toward the equinoctial, and came to that part of this firm
land which is now called Florida.” Of course the point which he reached
is very indefinite. Peter Martyr had said, thirty-five years before,
that Cabot told him that he went south _almost_ to the latitude of the
strait of Gibraltar, which is in 36° N. Nobody knows whether these two
accounts relate to the same voyage. That to which the conversation
refers is assumed by the narrator to be the voyage of discovery.
Indeed, for two hundred years and more there was no suspicion that a
voyage by the Cabots followed immediately the voyage of discovery;
though some incidents are related which may have taken place in a
subsequent voyage, and others which never took place at all. Modern
critics, who accept the above story as to the latitude reached at the
south, generally agree that it was only on the second voyage that this
was accomplished.
[23] The conversation at Caphi, at the house of Fracastor, who was a
friend of Ramusio, took place a short time only before its publication.
Ramusio says, in his report, “a few months ago.” We do not know
precisely when he wrote his report, but there is a reference in it
to a book of Jacob Tevius, published in 1548. As I have said above,
we do not know the year of the interview with Cabot at Seville. The
narrator says that it was “some years ago,” and I should infer that
it was some years after Cabot’s return in August, 1530, from the La
Plata expedition, to which Cabot in the interview refers. He also
mentions that he is growing old, and retiring from active duties. In
1540 he would probably have been approaching seventy years of age,
and this date may safely be assumed as not far from the time when the
conversation took place. M. D’Avezac, in _Revue Crit._, v. 265, gives
1544 or 1545 as the probable date.
To the publication of this report relating to Cabot, Hakluyt, in 1589,
prefixed the name of Galeacius Butrigarius, the Pope’s legate in Spain,
as the distinguished person who reported the conversation with Cabot;
and ever since that time, down to the publication of Biddle’s _Memoir
of Sebastian Cabot_, in 1831, the statement passed without question.
Biddle, who regarded the matter as of little moment, said there was no
authority for that name in Ramusio, who says himself that he withholds
it from motives of delicacy; but Biddle did not say, perhaps he did
not observe, that Hakluyt got the name from Eden (_Decades_, _f._ 252,
_verso_), who made the original blunder. Martyr, in the beginning of
his second Decade, written in 1515, speaks of knowing Butrigarius of
Bologna, when the latter was of the Pope’s embassy in Spain; and I find
that he died in 1518, in the forty-third year of his age (see Zedler’s
_Universal Lexikon_, v. 4, Halle, 1733). M. D’Avezac had noted, as
early as 1869, that Butrigarius had died thirty years before the
conversation took place at the house of Fracastor, and also that the
editor of Ramusio, Tomaso Giunti, had added the word Mantuan to this
anonymous person’s name; and now, through the researches instituted
by Charles Bullo and by the mediation of the superintendent of the
archives of the state at Venice, it is ascertained that this unknown
person was Gian Giacomo Bardolo, of Mantua. See _Intorno a Giovanni
Caboto_, etc., by Cornelio Desimoni, Genova, 1881, pp. 26, 27; also, in
_Atti_, vol. xv., of the Società ligure di storia patria.
[24] Fracastor died Aug. 8, 1553, over seventy years of age. He was a
maker of globes. Humphrey Gilbert says that he was a traveller in the
northern parts of America. (Kohl, p. 229; Hakluyt, 1589, p. 602).
[25] Ramusio, ii. 4; Hakluyt, 1589, p. 513.
[26] Hakluyt, 1589, p. 602.
[27] Eden’s _Decades_, fol. 318, corrected by the original. [The first
edition of Gomara is a rare book, and a copy has been lately priced by
Quaritch at £36. It proved to be one of the most popular of all the
books of that century on the New World; and, as we count, including
varieties of titles, there were more than a score of editions in fifty
years, so that his statements became widely known. There were seven
such issues in Spanish, either in Spain or in Flanders, in two years,
when the demand for it seems to have failed in its original tongue,
and was transferred to Italy, where at Rome and Venice there were six
editions in twenty years (1556 to 1576). Sabin says eighteen in that
interval, but I fail to find them. There was a seventh near the end
of the century (1599). In 1568 or 1569 there seem to have been three
issues of the first French translation, and six others followed,
from 1577 to 1597. These statements are based chiefly on the lists
of editions given in Sabin, vii. 306 (said to have been drawn up by
Mr. Brevoort); in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, i. 169; and Leclerc’s
_Bibliotheca Americana_, No. 143.—ED.]
[28] [See a later Editorial note on “The earliest English publications
on America.”—ED.]
[29] _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 206.
[30] _Mem. of Sebastian Cabot_, 110-119.
[31] Vol. iii. p. 4, 1556.
[32] _Divers Voyages_, Hakluyt Soc., pp. 50, 51.
[33] _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 208-210.
[34] Mr. Brevoort has submitted some notes to my attention, on this
voyage. Rejecting the year 1516-17 as impracticable, he adopts an
earlier date, before Cabot had left England, and finds some authority
for it in a book of George Beste, London, 1578, on the three voyages
of Frobisher, hereafter to be mentioned. The writer there gives 1508
as the year of Sebastian Cabot’s discovery of North America, probably
never having heard of any previous voyages. Mr. Brevoort thinks he had
authority for a voyage of Cabot about the year named. Thomas Pert, or
Spert, against whom the charge of “faint heart” is alleged by Eden, is
mentioned in vol. i. of _Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic, Henry
VIII._, 1512, C. 1514, as master of the “Mary Rose,” and of the “Great
Harry.” In 1514 he is pensioned, and in 1517 is placed on shore duty.
There is no report of him in 1516, but as he was a veteran in 1514 it
is hardly probable that he would have been on a voyage of discovery
in 1516. He is usually mentioned as Thomas Spert; only once is he
called Pert. As evidence that an expedition left England on a voyage
of discovery some time during the last years of Henry VII., or during
the early years of his successor, the _Interlude of the Four Elements_,
of uncertain date, but probably written before 1519, cited above, is
adduced as showing that the incident related occurred “not long ago.”
And certain verses which speak of the disobedience of the mariners,
which put an end to the voyage, and to the hopes of the projector,
afford the earliest reference to the mutiny story. Mr. Brevoort is of
opinion that Eden’s vague reference to an event occurring in the reign
of Henry VIII., “about the same year of his reign,” was intended to
place it in the 8th year of the century. But that would bring it within
the reign of Henry VII.
[35] _Mem. of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 62-66.
[36] Dedication of the book, folios 1, 2; _Biddle_, pp. 64, 65.
[37] Hakluyt’s _Divers Voyages_, 1582.
[38] He printed it on folios 316, and 317 of his _Decades_. See the
inscription in Latin in a work already cited, by Nathan Chytræus, pp.
779-781.
[39] See vol. iii, 807, and iv. 1812. See _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, ii.
224.
[40] Appendix to his _Mem. of Sebastian Cabot_. Mr. Biddle is said to
have paid £500 for the picture.
[41] See their _Proceedings_, ii. 101. 111.
[42] No. 103 in the Catalogue of its gallery. A copy of this picture,
painted in the year 1763, now hangs in the Sala della Scudo, in the
ducal palace in Venice, with a long Latin inscription composed probably
at the time the copy was made. _Notes and Queries_, 2d ser. vol. v. p.
2.
[43] See _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ Jan. 1865, pp. 91-96. _Hist. Mag._
Nov. 1869, pp. 306, 307.
[44] See the Appendix to the _Historical View of the progress of
Discovery on the more Northern Coasts of America_, by Patrick Fraser
Tytler, Esq.
[45] _Examen Crit._ iv. 232.
[46] iv. 1177.
[47] I might mention here that an English version of this book, made by
Thomas Hacket, was published in England in 1568, dedicated to Sir Henry
Sidney. The passage in question occurs in fol. 122 H. C. _Carter-Brown
Catalogue_, p. 241. [This version is perhaps rarer than the two French
editions (Paris and Anvers) of 1558, and the Italian of 1561, and is
worth ten guineas or thereabout. A recent French catalogue prices the
original Paris edition at about the same sum. It has been recently,
1878, reprinted in Paris with notes by Paul Gaffarel.—ED.]
[48] _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, p. 89.
[49] See _La Historia General de las Indias_, 1554, cap. xxxix, fol. 31.
[50] [_Huth Catalogue_, ii. 572, _Brinley Catalogue_, i. no. 29. This
translation is also contained in J. S. Clarke’s _Progress of Maritime
Discovery_, London, 1803, Appendix. The _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, i.
224, says an English translation was printed in the _Oxford Collection
of Voyages_, ii.—ED.]
[51] Pages 87, 88.
[52] Or inlet.
[53] Under the year 1526 Galvano says: “In the year 1526 there went
out of Sevill one Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian, being chief Pilote to
the emperor,” etc. There is added to the old English version, not in
the Portuguese text, after “a Venetian,”—“by his father, but born at
Bristol in England.” Hakluyt Society’s volume, p. 169.
[54] Mr. J. Winter Jones, the editor of the _Divers Voyages_ for the
Hakluyt Society, says, concerning the original French edition of
this work, that it “is not known to exist, and it is doubtful if it
ever was printed.” Hakluyt, however, in his “Discourse on Westerne
Planting,” published as vol. ii., _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, p. 20, says
it is “extant in print, both in French and English”. [Sparks, in his
_Life of Ribault_, p. 147, says that he cannot find that the original
French was ever published; but Gaffarel, _Floride Francaise_, says it
was published in London, 1563, as _Histoire de l’Expédition Francaise
en Floride_, and soon became scarce.—ED.]
[55] Hakluyt Society’s _Divers Voyages_, p. 92.
[56] As the language of Hacket’s English version of Ribault was
accessible to me only through Richard Hakluyt’s _Divers Voyages_, 1582,
in which he reprinted it, I had an ungenerous suspicion that he might
have substituted that date for another, he having placed the year
1498 in the margin of the page on which he first prints the alleged
extract from Fabian. The only known copy of Hacket’s translation is
in the British Museum, and on an appeal to that, through a transcript
of it taken for Mr. John Carter-Brown, I find Ribault’s date to be
1498. [Hacket’s version as given by Hakluyt is also reprinted in B. F.
French’s _Hist. Coll. of Louisiana and Florida_, ii. 159.—ED.]
[57] [Ortelius was not far from thirty years old, when Sebastian
Cabot died. He had been in England, and possibly had seen the old
navigator. Felix Van Hulst’s account of Ortelius was published in a
second edition at Liege in 1846. Ortelius was the first to collect
contemporary maps and combine them into a collection, which became
the precursor of the modern atlas. His learning and integrity, with
a discrimination that kept his judgment careful, has made his book
valuable as a trustworthy record of the best geographical knowledge
of his time. His position at Antwerp was favorable for broadening his
research, and a disposition to better each succeeding issue, in which
he was not hampered by deficiency of pecuniary resources, served to
spread his work widely. The first Latin edition of 1570 was followed
by others in that language, and in Dutch, German, French, and Italian,
with an ever-increasing number of maps, and recasting of old ones.
These editions, including epitomes, numbered at least twenty-six, down
to 1606, when it was for the first time put into English, followed by
an epitome in the same language, with smaller maps, in 1610. There were
a few editions on the continent during the rest of that century (the
latest we note is an Italian one in 1697), but other geographers with
their new knowledge were then filling the field.—ED.]
[58] See Biddle’s _Cabot_, p. 56.
[59] _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, p. 255.
[60] _The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_, Hakluyt Soc. 1867, p. 22.
[This putting forth of energy by the English at this time in pursuit of
maritime discovery is reflected in the larger production of the English
press in this direction, as shown in a later Editorial note.—ED.]
[61] Biddle’s _Cabot_, p. 291.
[62] Vol. iii, p. 4.
[63] See also Hakluyt, 1589, p. 602.
[64] Richard Eden died about this time, perhaps in the previous year.
He left among his papers a translation, made “in the year of our
Lord, 1576,” and from the Latin of Lewis Vartomannus, which Willes
includes in his own edition. The last book published by Eden was an
English translation from the Latin of a book on navigation, by Joannes
Taisnierus, public professor in Rome and of several universities in
Italy. It bears no date, but it is supposed to have been issued in
1576 or 1577. See _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, pt. 1. p. 262, which puts
its date 1576; but it is given 1579 in Markham’s _Davis’s Voyages_. In
the Epistle Dedicatory, Eden speaks of attending “the good old man,”
Sebastian Cabot, “on his death-bed,” and listening to his flighty
utterances about a divine revelation of a new method for finding the
longitude. See Biddle, pp. 222, 223. Eden was also engaged in other
literary enterprises not mentioned by me.
[65] Willes’s _History of Travayle_, etc., fol. 232, 233; Biddle’s
_Cabot_, p. 292; Hakluyt, 1589, pp. 610-616.
[66] Kohl, p. 364.
[67] I quote from Biddle’s _Cabot_, p. 27; but Brunet, iii. 1945, and
_Supplement_, i. 1129, notice an edition in 1575, 3 vol. folio. See
also Stevens’s _Bibliotheca Historica_, 1870. p. 121.
[68] Tom. ii. p. 2175.
[69] Biddle, p. 28.
[70] [See _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, pt. i. p. 292, which shows there
were two editions the same year. The book is rare, and was priced by
Leclerc in 1878 at 650 francs. Stevens, _Hist. Coll._ i. 135, says he
has seen but two copies of the map which should accompany the book.
This is a folded woodcut, which in the main is a reduced copy of the
map in Ortelius’s first edition. The map is in the Harvard College
copy. The _Huth Catalogue_, iv. 1169, shows the map.—ED.]
[71] Hakluyt, in a _Discourse on Westerne Planting_, written in 1584,
which was printed for the first time by the Maine Hist. Soc. in 1877,
cites this book of Popellinière, and gives an English version from it
of the conversation in Ramusio. Hakluyt is here asserting the Queen
of England’s title to all the territory “from Florida to the Circle
Arctic,” and he enlarges upon the exploits of Sebastian Cabot, on which
the claim of England is based.
[72] _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 42-47.
[73] [They were subsequently reprinted in Rymer’s _Fœdera_, in
Chalmers’s and Hazard’s _Hist. Coll._ and in the Hakluyt Society’s ed.
of the _Divers Voyages_.—ED.]
[74] In the _Proceedings_ of the American Antiquarian Society for
October, 1881, Mr. George Dexter has traced the publication of this
alleged extract from Fabian to an earlier date than had usually
been assigned to it. It was published by Stow, in his _Annals_, in
1580, together with the paragraph relating to the savage men said
to have been brought home by Sebastian Cabot, and also printed by
Hakluyt in 1582. They were also printed in the second edition of
Holinshed, 1586-87. The Cotton manuscript, Vitellius, A. xvi., has been
re-examined, and proves not to be a Fabian. Mr. Dexter has printed the
two extracts from it, the latter, relating to the “savage men,” for
the first time. In the Cotton collection, Nero, C. xi., is a genuine
Fabian, but it contains nothing about Cabot. The conclusion to which I
have arrived from this examination by Mr. Dexter is, that the Vitellius
manuscript was not the original used by Stow and Hakluyt. They give
facts and details not to be found in that manuscript; and this remark
will particularly apply to the extract relating to the three savage
men, which in the Vitellius is brief and meagre. Both Stow and Hakluyt
must have used a genuine Fabian manuscript yet to be discovered. For
though neither would probably hesitate to add or change a name or a
date, if he thought he had sufficient authority for so doing, they
would not manufacture a narrative.
As regards the savage men referred to, Stow, under the date of
1502, says they were that year presented to the King, yet that they
were brought over by Sebastian Cabot in 1498, giving Fabian as his
authority. Hakluyt, in his quarto of 1582, repeats the same story, on
the same authority; yet in his folio of 1589 he changes the date in
his heading as to the year of their presentation to the King, making
it conform to the year in which they were brought over. Mr. Biddle
(_Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 230, 231) has a labored argument to
show that the men were not brought over by Cabot, but by some one else,
in the year they were presented to the King, 1502, reflecting severely
on Hakluyt for changing this last date. It is not at all probable that
the name of either John Cabot or Sebastian Cabot was given in the
original manuscript used by Stow and Hakluyt. I will add that George
Beste, in his work on the voyages of Frobisher, cited above, says that
Sebastian Cabot brought home “sundry of the people” of the country
he visited, “and many other things, in token of possession taken,”
very oddly assigning the voyage, which he regarded as the voyage of
discovery, to the year 1508.
[75] I had called attention to this fact in some notes on Cabot’s
map in the _Proceedings_ of the Am. Antiq. Soc. for April, 1867, and
Dr. Kohl, p. 371, says that Locke is supposed to have copied the
inscription from a map of Cabot in England. The fact must have been
inscribed on some other map of Cabot than the recently recovered one in
Paris, for that certainly does not bear out the conjecture.
[76] Hakluyt, 1589, p. 680.
[77] Hakluyt, iii. 173.
[78] In the year 1584 Richard Hakluyt, at the request of Sir
Walter Raleigh, wrote a _Discourse on Westerne Planting_,—to which I
have already made a brief reference,—supposed to embody the opinions
of the statesmen of England at that period on the colonization of
North America. It is a remarkable paper, intended for the eye of the
Queen. After giving all the reasons why England should enter upon
this work speedily, he presents, in chapter xviii. “the Queen of
England’s title to all the West Indies, or at least to as much as is
from Florida to the circle Arctic,” as being “more lawful and right
than the Spaniards’, or any other Christian princes’;” and the claim
is based mainly on the discovery by Sebastian Cabot, in the year 1496,
as related in the first volume of Ramusio, which is cited. Hakluyt is
anxious to make it appear that Cabot discovered North America before
Columbus discovered the firm land of the Indies; yea, more than a year
before, and he recurs more than once to this date as showing the fact.
Indeed, he once goes so far as to cite the date on Clement Adams’s
map, 1494, as carrying the claim yet farther back. [The history of
this manuscript, published as vol. ii. of the _Documentary History of
Maine_, is traced in an Editorial note to Dr. De Costa’s chapter.—ED.]
[79] _Memoir of S. Cabot_, pp. 30, 178-180.
[80] _Ibid._ p. 31.
[81] This book of Mr. Biddle was published in London in two editions,
1831 and 1832, and in the United States, 1831, all without the name of
the author, an eminent jurist and statesman of Pittsburg, Penn., who
was born in 1795, and died in 1847. It is a work of great value for its
authorities, and displays much critical talent; and though composed
with little system and with a strong bias in favor of Sebastian Cabot,
whom the author makes his hero, it may be regarded as the best review
of the history of maritime discovery relating to the period of which he
treats, that had appeared.
[The most important notice of Mr. Biddle’s book occurred in Tytler’s
_Historical View of the Progress of Discovery on the more Northern
Coasts of America_, Biddle’s reflections upon Hakluyt being the
particular occasion of a vindication of that collector. George S.
Hillard also reviewed Biddle in the _North American Review_, xxxiv.
405, and it elicited other essays in contemporary journals. It supplied
largely the material for Hayward’s _Life of Cabot_ in Sparks’s
_American Biography_. The most recent treatment of the subject is in
a condensed and somewhat enthusiastic _Remarkable Life, Adventures
and Discoveries of Sebastian Cabot_, by J. F. Nicholls, the public
librarian of Bristol, London, 1869. This writer ascribes the chief
glory to Sebastian and not to the father, and rather grandly lauds
his achievements. This provoked Henry Stevens to putting a note in
his _Bibliotheca Historica_, 1870, no. 2519, in vindication of John
Cabot’s greater claim,—a view he again emphasized in a little tract,
with the expressive mathematical title, _Sebastian Cabot-John Cabot =
O_: Boston, 1870. Some of the later information has been embodied by
Bancroft in a paper on Cabot in the _New American Cyclopædia_, which
he has used again in vol. i. of his Centenary Ed. _History of the
United States_. A very good resumé of existing knowledge as it stood
forty-five years ago, is given in Conway Robinson’s _Discoveries in the
West and Voyages along the Atlantic Coast_, Richmond, 1848. A somewhat
similar treatment is given in Peschel’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters
der Entdeckungen_, book ii., ch. 6, and notice may also be taken of
the same author’s _Geschichte der Erdkunde_, vol. iv. Fox Bourne, in
his _English Seamen under the Tudors_, gives a summary of the Cabots’
career as explorers, and in his _English Merchants_ he treats of their
relation to British commerce and the enterprise of Bristol. Mr. Travers
Twiss communicated some papers on the relative influence of Columbus
and Cabot on American Discovery to the _Nautical Magazine_, July and
August, 1876; and a review of a somewhat similar kind will be found in
Admiral Jurien de la Gravière’s _Les Marins du xv^e et xvi^e Siècles_,
composed of papers which had originally appeared in the _Revue des deux
Mondes_, 1876, _et seq._ Among other views, reference may be made to
F. von Hellward’s _Sebastian Cabot_, 43 pp.; Malte-Brun’s _Annales des
Voyages_, xcix., p. 39.—ED.]
[82] Page 126.
[83] Vol. iii. p. 807.
[84] See D’Avezac in the _Bulletin de la Soc. Géog._, Quar. Ser., xvi.
272, 273.
[85] [The titles of these works in full, with some further account of
the instrumentality of Hakluyt in advancing discovery, are given in
Dr. De Costa’s chapter on “Norumbega,” and in the notes accompanying
it.—ED.]
[86] M. D’Avezac, in the _Bulletin de la Soc. Géog._, Quar. Ser., xiv.,
271, 272, 1857, and Dr. Asher in his _Henry Hudson_ (Hakluyt Soc.),
pp. lxviii, 261, 1860, both express the opinion that Clement Adams
deliberately altered the date from 1494 to 1497, the latter being the
date copied by Hakluyt into his extract from Adams’s map, as published
in the third volume of his fol. of 1600; neither of these writers being
aware of the fact that in Hakluyt’s first citation from Adams’s map, in
his folio of 1589, the date 1494 was given. All we know of Adams’s map
is derived from Hakluyt; and as an additional evidence that the extract
cited from it bore the date 1494, we have Hakluyt’s previous statement,
in his _Discourse on Westerne Planting_, cited above, where this fact
is clearly affirmed.
In the _Proceedings_ of the Am. Antiq. Soc. for April, 1867, I called
attention, in some notes on Cabot’s map, to the inadvertences of
these distinguished historians; and, in a later paper by M. D’Avezac,
printed in the _Bulletin de la Soc. Géog._, in Paris for 1869, and
translated in the _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 506, 507, he revises his
opinion, and affirms his belief that the change of date from 1494,
in Hakluyt’s first folio, to 1497 in that of 1600 was caused by a
typographical error. [D’Avezac’s paper was entitled: _Les navigations
Terre-neuviennes de Jean et Sébastien Cabot—Lettre au Révérend Leonard
Woods_: and was also printed separately in Paris.—ED.]
[87] [See the note on Molyneaux’s map, with a sketch of it, appended to
the chapter on “Norumbega.”—ED.]
[88] It has been suggested that Hakluyt had access to Cabot’s papers
in possession of William Worthington, and that they revealed the true
date. It is a pity he did not “make note of it” among his authorities.
See R. H. Major’s _True Date of the English Discovery_, etc., London,
1870, originally printed in the _Archæologia_, xliii, 17.
The mention of the name of William Worthington, against whom Mr. Biddle
has emphasized a suspicion of unjust dealing with Sebastian Cabot,
reminds me of a remark of M. D’Avezac in speaking of the marriage
of Cabot to Catherine Medrano,—that he suspected that Worthington,
instead of being hostile to Cabot, was, on the contrary, bound to him
by family ties. See _Revue Critique_, v. 268, 269.
[89] Page 511.
[90] Page 128.
[91] Mr. Major concludes his paper by producing incontestable evidence
from the recently published Venetian and Spanish Calendars, to be
adduced farther on, that the true date of discovery was 1497.
[92] See a more full analysis of this subject in _Proceedings_ of the
Am. Antiq. Soc. for April, 1867.
[93] See vol. i. 226, 274; ii. 243, 267; iii. 10; cf. Biddle, 184-187,
311, who doubts as to Cabot’s appointment as “grand pilot,” as asserted
by Hakluyt. [Davis, in his _World’s Hydrographical Descriptions_, does
not give him any official title in 1595. “Sebastian Gabota, an expert
pilot, and a man reported of speciall judgment, who being that wayes
imployed returned without successe.” _Davis’s Voyages_ (Hakluyt Soc.),
p. 195.—ED.]
[94] The Legend no. xvii. of the map is copied from Chytræus into the
text of the _Tabularum Geog. Contractatrum_ of Peter Bertius, published
in Latin and in French. In the Latin edition of 1602 or 1603, the
second edition, the Legend is given on page 627, and in the French of
1617 on page 777. The text is ascribed to Jodocus Hondius, who died in
1612, says Lelewel, in his _Géographie du Moyen Age_. (_Letter of J.
Carson Brevoort._)
[95] Among the many works whose publication was inspired by Hakluyt,
was the issue in 1612 of an English version of the eight _Decades_
of Peter Martyr, translated by Michael Locke, thus laying before
the English reader whatever that industrious chronicler had written
concerning Sebastian Cabot. The first three Decades, as we have already
seen, had been translated by Richard Eden, many years before, and
those were now adopted by Locke into his completed version; the work
was entitled _De Novo Orbe, or the History of the West Indies_, etc.,
London, 1612. It contained a Latin dedication to Sir Julius Cæsar,
and an address in English to the reader. The same sheets were also
issued with another titlepage without date, and omitting the Latin
dedication, and also again in 1628 with a new title, calling the book
a second edition. [Copies of either issue are worth from £5 to £10,
and even more. Fifty years ago Rich (1832, no. 130) priced one at £1
16_s._ The text was reprinted in the supplement to the 1809 edition of
Hakluyt.—ED.]
Purchas has several notices of the Cabots taken from Hakluyt
principally, hereafter the great authority cited, and from Ramusio.
His is the earliest mention made, within my knowledge, of Sebastian
Cabot’s picture in Whitehall gallery, but he speaks of it as though it
were displayed on Clement Adams’s map hanging there. He probably never
took the trouble to visit the gallery himself, but wrote from wrong
information.
[Purchas’s _Pilgrimage_ gave his own form and language to the accounts
of the voyages which he collected, and those in his eighth and
ninth book concern America. It was published in 1613, when he was
thirty-six years old. There was a second edition in 1614, and a third
with additions in 1617, the year after Purchas inherited Hakluyt’s
manuscripts. He now set about his greater work,—_Hakluytus Posthumus,
or Purchas, his Pilgrimes_,—in which he changed his method, and
preserved the language of the narratives, which he brought together.
This was published in four volumes (part of the third and all of the
fourth volume pertaining to America), in 1625; and the next year a
new edition of his first work was brought out, which has ever since
constituted the fifth volume of the entire work. The set has nearly or
quite quadrupled in value during the last fifty and sixty years, and
superior copies are now worth £100; such a copy however must contain
the original engraved frontispiece with its little map of the world,
which is seldom found, and “Hondius his Map of the World,” which is
rarer still, on page 95, where ordinary copies show a reduplication
merely of the map properly belonging on page 115. Mr. Deane owns
Thomas Prince’s copy of the American portions, which are enriched with
Prince’s notes. Samuel Sewall’s copy is in Harvard College Library.
Purchas survived the publication but two years, and died in 1628.
His service to the cause in which he and Hakluyt were so conspicuous
workers, was great, but is not generally accounted as equal to that of
the elder chronicler. See Clarke’s _Maritime Discovery_, i. xiii., and
the references in Allibone’s _Dictionary_. Bohn’s Lowndes p. 2010, is
useful in determining the collation, which is confused.—ED.]
Bacon, in his _Life of Henry VII._ published in 1622, notices the
voyage of Sebastian Cabot, in which North America was discovered; but
mentioning no year implies that it took place in 1498. His principal
authority seems to have been Stowe’s _Chronicle_.
A valuable work was published at Madrid in 1629, by Pinello D. Ant. de
Leon, entitled an _Epitome de la bibliotheca oriental i occidental,
nautica i geographica_, etc. of which a second edition, edited by De
Barcia, was published in 1737-38. Particular mention is made in it
of the several editions of the writings of Peter Martyr, though the
information is not always correct. He says that Juan Pablo Martyr Rizo,
a descendant of Peter Martyr, had a manuscript translation in Spanish
of the Decades for printing, which we may well believe never appeared.
[96] In the _Foreign and Domestic Calendars of Henry VIII._, ii. pt.
ii. p. 1576, Sebastian Talbot (Cabot) is named as receiving twenty
shillings, in May, 1512, “for making a card of Gascoigne and Guyon.” He
left soon after for Spain.
[97] Dec. i. p. 254, Madrid, 1730; Biddle, p. 98.
[98] Navarrete, _Historica Nautica_, p. 138.
[99] Page 119.
[100] D’Avezac, in _Revue Critique_, v. 265.
[101] Herrera, Dec. ii. p. 18.
[102] Navarrete, _Coll._ iii. 319.
[103] Navarrete, _Bibl. Maritima_, tome ii. pp. 697-700; Herrera, Dec.
ii. p. 70; _Venetian Calendar_, vol. ii. no. 607.
[104] Herrera, Dec. ii. p. 226; Cf. Biddle, p. 121.
[105] Gomara, cap. xcix. Navarrete, _Coll._ iv. 339; _Bibl. Maritima_,
as above. Cf. Biddle, pp. 122, 123.
[106] Biddle’s _Cabot_, pp. 123-128, where will be found a good summary
of these events, with the original authorities cited; with which cf.
Peter Martyr, Dec. vii. cap. 6; Navarrete, _Bibl. Maritima_, as above.
[107] _Bibl. Maritima_, as above.
[108] Navarrete, _Bibl. Maritima_, ii. 697-700; Ibid. _Coll._ v. 333;
Herrera, Dec. iv. pp. 168, 169, 214; D’Avezac, _Bulletin Soc. Géog._
Quart. Ser. xiv. 268.
[109] Navarrete, _Nautica_, pp. 135, 136, 155.
[110] _Viage del Sutil y Mexicana_, in 1792; Madrid, 1802, Introduction
(by Don M. F. Navarrete, then a young man), p. xlii.
[111] Oviedo, _Historia general y natural de las Indias_, ii. p. 169,
1852.
[112] In a notice of the settlement of the estate of Sir Thomas Lovell,
who died May 25, 1524, among the debts unpaid and now, February
18, discharged, was one to John Goderyk of Cornwall, draper, for
conducting Sebastyan Cabot, master of the pilots in Spain, to London,
at testator’s request, 43_s._ 4_d._—_Letters and Papers_, Henry VIII.,
vol. iv. pt. i. p. 154.
[113] _Venetian Calendars_, vol. iii., nos. 557, 558, 589, 607, 634,
669, 670, 710, 1115; V. 711; _Foreign_, under date Sept. 12, 1551;
Hardy’s _Report upon Venetian Calendars_, pp. 7, 8.
[114] Strype, _Eccl. Mem_. Oxford, 1822, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 296;
Harleian MSS., quoted by Biddle, p. 175, where the story is told in
a letter dated April 21, 1550, from the Council to Sir Philip Hoby,
resident minister in Flanders. Bancroft, _American Cyclopædia_, iii.
530.
[115] Biddle, pp. 187, 217, 219; Rymer’s _Fœdera_, xv. 427, 466;
Bancroft, as above.
[116] [It is well known that in commemoration of the English discovery,
_Cabotia_ a has been urged as a name for North America; but if
_Sebastia_, urged by William Doyle in his _Acc. of the British Dominion
beyond the Atlantic_, 1770, had been adopted, we should have had a
misapplication, quite mating the mishap which gave the name of America
to the western hemisphere.—ED.]
[117] _Venetian Calendars_, vol. i. no. 453; D’Avezac, _Doc. Hist.
Maine_, i. 504, 505; S. Romanin, _Storia Documentata_, iv. 453.
[118] Mr. J. F. Nichols, in his _Life of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 20, 21,
appears to misapprehend the terms of this privilege of naturalization,
supposing it was a grant of citizenship for fifteen years to come,
and not on account of fifteen years’ residence already passed. The
memorandum reads: “Quod fiat privilegium civilitatis de intus et extra
Joani Caboto per habitationem annorum xv. juxta consuetum,”—“That a
privilege of citizenship, within and without, be made for John Cabot,
as usual, _on account_ of a residence of fifteen years.” That such is
the proper interpretation of the grant is shown by the full document
itself, issued four years previously to another person, and referred
to in the Register, where the privilege to John Cabot is recorded. The
document recites that “Whereas, whoever shall have dwelt continuously
in Venice _for a space of fifteen years or more_, spending that time
in performing the duties of our kingdom, shall be our citizen and
Venetian, and shall enjoy the privilege of citizenship and other
benefits,” etc. Then follows the statement that the person applying had
offered satisfactory proofs that he _had dwelt continuously in Venice
for fifteen years_, and had faithfully performed the other duties
required, and he was thereupon declared to be a Venetian and citizen,
within and without, etc. (See _Intorno a Giovanni Caboto_, etc., by
Cornelio Desimoni, Genova, 1881, pp. 43-45.)
[119] Ramusio, i. 374.
[120] _Decades_, f. 255.
[121] M. D’Avezac believed that Sebastian Cabot was born in 1472 or
1473, and that John Cabot and his family removed to England not far
from the year 1477. He infers this last date from a conviction that
John Cabot early engaged in maritime voyages from Bristol, and that
the mention of a vessel sailing from that port in 1480, belonging to
John Jay the younger, conducted by “the most skilful mariner in all
England,” pointed to John Cabot as the real commander. And he thought
he derived some support for this opinion from some passages in the
letter of D’Ayala, the Spanish ambassador, mentioned farther on, in
regard to voyages made from Bristol to the west for several years
before the date of his letter. See Corry’s _History of Bristol_, i.
318, a work not accurate in relation to the Cabot voyages; cf. Botoner,
_alias_ William Wyrcestre, in _Antiquities of Bristol_, pp. 152, 153.
[122] _Spanish Calendars_, vol. i. no. 128.
[123] Strachey, in his _Historie of Travaile into Virginia_ (written
between the years 1612 and 1619), p. 6, says that John Cabot, to whom
and to his three sons letters patents were granted by Henry VII. in
1496, was “idenized his subject, and dwelling within the Blackfriers,”
etc.
[124] _History and Antiquities of Bristol_, 1789, p. 172.
[125] In vol. iv. of the new edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_,
now publishing, at p. 350, under the article Bristol, is the
following:—
“This year (1497), on St. John’s the Baptist’s Day, the land of America
was found by the merchants of Bristowe, in a ship of Bristol called the
‘Matthew,’ the which said ship departed from the port of Bristow the 2d
of May, and come home again 6th August following.”
Some of the dates are new. This statement is credited to an ancient
manuscript “in possession of the Fust Family of Hill Court,
Gloucestershire, the ‘collations’ of which are now, 1876, in the
keeping of Mr. William George, bookseller, Bristol.”
This memorandum, containing the name of “America,” must have been
written many years after the event described. Bristol manuscripts have
been subjected to much suspicion. See an article in the English _Notes
and Queries_, 2d series, vol. v. p. 154.
[126] Biddle’s _Cabot_, p. 80.
[127] _Venetian Calendars_, i. 262.
[128] _Venetian Calendars_, i. 260. These papers were for the first
time printed in America by the American Antiquarian Society, in their
_Proceedings_ for October, 1866, in an interesting communication from
the Rev. Edward E. Hale, D.D., principally relating to the Cabot
voyages. [Mr. Rawdon Brown, who calendared these papers, made his
discoveries the subject of a paper on the Cabots in the Philobiblion
Society’s _Collections_, ii. 1856; and in the preface to the first
volume of the _Venetian Calendars_, A.D. 1202 to 1509, he describes
the archives at Venice, which yield these early evidences. The late
Professor Eugenio Albèri edited at Florence _Le Relazioni degli
Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato durante il Seclo_ xvi^o, in fifteen
volumes, which contain numerous reports of English transactions at that
time.—ED.]
[129] And is copied by Cornelio Desimoni, in his _Giovanni Caboto_,
Genoa, 1881.
[130] “John Cabot’s Voyage of 1497,” in _Hist. Mag._ xiii. 131 (March,
1868), with a section of the Cabot (Paris) map. See also “The Discovery
of North America by John Cabot in 1497,” by Mr. Frederic Kidder, in the
_N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._ (Oct. 1878), xxxii. 381 [who reproduces
also a part of the same map, and gives a sketch-map marking Cabot’s
track around the Gulf. He bases his argument partly on Pasqualigo’s
statement that Cabot found the tides “slack,” and shows that the
difference in their rise and fall in that region is small compared
with what Cabot had been used to, at Bristol. In the confusion of the
two Cabot voyages, which for a long while prevailed (see an instance
in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ x. 383, under date, 1663), the track of
his first voyage is often made to extend down the eastern seaboard
of the present United States, and it is thus laid down on the map in
Zurla’s _Di Marco Polo e degli viaggiatori Veneziani_, Venezia, 1818.
Stevens, _Hist. and Geog. Notes_, does not allow that on either voyage
the coast south of the St. Lawrence was seen; and urges that for some
years the coast-line farther south was drawn from Marco Polo’s Asiatic
coasts; and he contends for the “honesty” of the Portuguese Portolano
of 1514, which leaves the coast from Nova Scotia to Charleston a blank,
holding that this confirms his view. It may be a question whether it
was honesty or ignorance. Dr. Hale, _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._ Oct. 21,
1871, gives a sketch-map to show the curious correspondence of the
Asian and American coast lines. Observe it also in the Finæus map,
already given.—ED.]
[131] I am indebted to Professor Franklin B. Dexter, of Yale College,
for the privilege of using this paper, copied by him from the
collection of Privy Seals, no. 40, in her Majesty’s Public Record
Office in London. Other valuable memoranda, including a copy of the
renewal to Sebastian Cabot, in 1550, of the patent of 1495/6, were also
generously placed in my hands by Professor Dexter.
[132] Of course, neither John Cabot nor Sebastian could furnish ships
at his own charge, any more than Columbus could. Raimondo says that
John was “poor,” and the acceptance by him of small gifts from the King
proves it. He was probably aided by the wealthy men of Bristol, with
whom he may have taken up a credit.
Among the Privy Purse expenses under date of 22d March and 1st April,
1498, are sums of money, £20, £20, £30, £2, paid to several persons
in the way of loan, or of reward, for their “going towards the new
isle.” Three of these payments were to Lanslot Thirkill, of London, who
appears to have been an owner or master of a ship. (Biddle, p. 86.)
[133] _Calendar of Spanish State Papers_, i. 176-77. [This letter was
discovered by Bergenroth in 1860, the document being preserved at
Simancas. See also Bergenroth’s _Memoirs_, p. 77, and _Amer. Antiq.
Soc. Proc._ Oct. 21, 1865, p. 25.—ED.]
[134] Biddle, pp. 227-234, 312.
In a work entitled _Armorial de la Noblesse de Languedock_, by M. Louis
de la Roque, Paris, 1860, vol. ii. p. 163, there is an account of the
family of Cabot in that Province. The writer says that this family
derived its name and origin from Jean Cabot, a Venetian nobleman who
settled in Bristol in the reign of Henry VII.; was a distinguished
navigator, the discoverer of Terre Neuve, thence passing into the
service of Spain; that he had three sons,—Jean (who died in Venice),
Louis, and Sebastian (who continued in the service of England and died
in France without posterity); that Louis, here called the second son,
settled at Saint-Paul-le-Coste, in the Cévennes, had a son Pierre,
who died Dec. 27, 1552, leaving a will, by which is shown his descent
from Jean the navigator, through his father Louis. Through Pierre the
family is traced down to the present time. The arms of the family are
given: _Device_, “D’azur à trois chabots d’or;” motto, “Semper cor
cabot Cabot,”—the same as those of the ancient family of Cabot in the
island of Jersey, whence the New England family of Cabot sprung. Mr.
Henry Cabot Lodge, in the introduction to his _Life of George Cabot_,
has given reasons for believing that the French family was derived
from that of Jersey. The three sons of John Cabot named in the letters
patent of March 5, 1496, are Louis, Sebastian, and Sancius, the last of
whom is not named in the list here cited.
It may well be doubted if Jean Cabot is properly styled above “a
Venetian nobleman.” See the grant of denization to him in Venice, the
several letters patent to him of Henry VII., and the letter of Raimondo
on page 54. In the statement that he entered into the service of Spain,
he is evidently confounded with his son Sebastian, who, it may be
added, did not die in France, but in England. Whether Sebastian left
posterity is not known, but he had a wife and children while he was
living in Spain. Referring to the motto of the family here given, I may
add that the motto on Sebastian’s picture is “Spes mea in Deo est.”
Mention is made on page 31 of a portrait of Sebastian Cabot, till
recently attributed to Holbein, painted in England when Cabot was a
very old man, of which a copy taken in 1763 now hangs in the Ducal
Palace in Venice. At a meeting of the French Geographical Society,
April 16, 1869, M. D’Avezac stated that M. Valentinelli, of Venice,
had recently sent to him a photograph copy of a portrait of John
Cabot, and one of his son Sebastian Cabot, at the age of twenty years,
after the picture of Grizellini, belonging to the gallery of the Ducal
Palace. He proceeded to say that some guarantee for the authenticity
of the picture of Sebastian was afforded by some traces of resemblance
between it and the well-known portrait of him by Holbein at the age
of eighty-five years (_Bulletin de la Soc. de Géographie_, 5 ser. to.
17, p. 406). The existence of a portrait of Sebastian Cabot taken
at so early an age, before he left Venice to live in England, would
be an interesting fact if authentic. An authentic picture of John
Cabot, the real discoverer of North America, would have even higher
claims to our regard. Prefixed to a Memoir of “Giovanni Cabotto,” by
Carlo Barrera Pezzi, published at Venice in 1881, which has just come
under my notice, is a medallion portrait, inscribed “Giovanni Cabotto
Veneziano.” It is not referred to by the author in the book in which it
is inserted.
[135] [See Editorial Note, A, at end of chapter vi. of the present
volume.—ED.]
[136] In this narrative is an account of tobacco twenty years before
that luxury was introduced into England by Ralph Lane. The account is
in these words (the grammar is defective, but the copy is accurate):
“The Floridians, when they travel, have a kinde of herbe dryed, which
with a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with fire, and the dried
herbs put together, do sucke thoro the cane the smoke thereof, which
smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live foure or five
days without meat or drinke, and this all the Frenchmen vsed for this
purpose: yet do they holde opinion withall that it causeth water and
fleame to void from their stomacks.” It is a little curious that he
should thus connect tobacco with Florida, as if he had not observed its
use in the West Indies. It had, indeed, been used in Southern Europe
before this time.
[137] A recently discovered letter of Winthrop shows that the
Massachusetts colonists made wine of their grapes in the first summer.
The appetite for such wine does not seem perilous.
[138] [The story of this French colony is told in Vol. II.—ED.]
[139]
“Thy name is hasty pudding: how I blush To hear the Pennsylvanians call
thee mush!”
—BARLOW: _Hasty Pudding_.
[140] One hundred and forty years later, Daniel De Foe, a devoted
Christian man, wrote his celebrated biography of Robinson Crusoe, who,
when he had been long living in Brazil as a planter, met his critical
shipwreck in a voyage to the African coast for slaves. The romance
is intended by its author to be what we call a religious novel. The
religious experiences of the hero are those to which De Foe attached
most importance. In the relation of these experiences he enumerates and
repents his “manifold sins and wickedness.” But among these, although
he regrets his own folly in risking so much in the pursuit of wealth,
it is never intimated that there is anything wrong in dragging these
wretched negroes unwilling from their homes: so slow had been the
development of the spirit of humanity in the sixteenth and even the
seventeenth century, and so ill defined were the rights of man!
[141] [See the note on Ingram’s and Hortop’s narratives in the critical
part of chap. vi. Since hat chapter was in type, Dr. De Costa has
examined anew the story of Ingram’s journey, and has printed Ingram’s
relation, from a manuscript in the Bodleian, in the _Magazine of
American History_, March, 1883.—ED.]
[142] By a play upon his name,—“Dracus,” or “Draco.” See the curious
coincidence of “Caput Draconis,” mentioned in a later note.
[143] Cortes was never “silent upon a peak in Darien,” except
in Keats’s poem.
[144] _The World Encompased._
[145] [It is to be observed, however, that the Portuguese, who
had made their way to the Moluccas by the Cape of Good Hope in 1512,—a
year before Balboa disclosed the great sea to the Spaniards,—claim
that in the very year (1520) when Magellan was finding a passage
by the straits, and Cortes was exploring the Gulf of Mexico in the
vain endeavor to find another, their ships from the Moluccas crossed
the ocean eastward and struck the coast of California. It is also
represented that the expedition conducted by Cabrillo, a Portuguese in
the King of Spain’s service, went up to 44° in 1542-43. This phase of
the subject is more particularly examined in Vol. II.—ED.]
[146] It should be remembered that all these dates are of old style, and
correspond to dates ten days later now.
[147] [It is a question how far north Drake went. Up to the middle
of the last century, the writers, except Davis in his _World’s
Hydrographical Discovery_, and perhaps Sir William Monson, had fixed
his northing at 43°,—these two exceptions placing it at 48°, and this
last opinion has been followed by Burney, Barrow, and the writer of
the Life of Drake in the 1750 edition of the _Biographia Britannica_.
Greenhow, _Oregon and California_, 2d edition, p. 74, doubts the later
view. Drake’s aim was to find the westerly end of what was for a long
time the conjectural Straits of Anian, or the northern passage to
the Atlantic, which, ever since Cortereal, in 1500, had found what
he supposed the easterly end of such a passage in Hudson’s Straits,
had been a dream of navigators and geographers. An examination of
the unstable views which were held regarding the shape and inlets of
the western coast of North America, from the time of Cortes’ first
expedition north, belongs to another volume of this work. A notion of
the continuity of Asia and America, which was temporarily dispelled by
Balboa’s discovery of the Pacific in 1513, was revived twenty years
later by a certain school of geographers, and continued to be held by
some for thirty or forty years. Before Drake’s time it had given place
to views which more distinctly prefigured the Straits of Behring,
not yet to be determined for a hundred and fifty years. The earlier
conjectural propinquity of America and Asia at the north—as shown in
the maps of Münster, Mercator, and others—was giving place to a more
minute configuration, as shown in the maps of Zaltieri and Furlano,
of which outlines are given in the text, indicating the kind of view
which was prevailing regarding this northern part of the Pacific,
which Drake was baffled in his attempt to explore. It is curious to
observe, moreover, that Mercator in his map in zones, dated 1541,
marks the region later to be called New Albion as having the star
_Caput Draconis_ in the zenith,—almost in strange anticipation of its
being the spot where the English “dragon” was first to contest Spanish
supremacy on the North American continent. Spain had as yet had no
sharer of this northern new world.—ED.]
[148] In the narrative in Hakluyt _tobàh_ is always called tobacco.
But Fletcher and Drake’s nephew in _The World Encompassed_ call it
_tobàh_ or _tabàh_; and they knew tobacco and its name perfectly well.
They speak of it as an herb new to them. There is no evidence that the
natives smoked _tobàh_.
[149] Alarcon’s account is in these words. He speaks of the winter
houses of which Nargarchato informed him. “He told me that these houses
were of wood covered with earth on the outside, and plastered with clay
within; that they were in form of a round room.” The reader should
remember that Fletcher alludes to the architectural device, still to be
seen in old New England churches, where the roof rises on all sides to
a spire in the middle.
[150] The fondness for feathers is observed by later voyagers; cf. La
Perouse.
[151] So in Shelvocke’s journal of his voyage in 1719. “The soil about
Puerto Seguro, and very likely in most of the valleys, is a rich
black mould, which, as you turn it up fresh to the sun, appears as if
intermixed with gold and dust.”
[152] [The Spanish minister, indeed, protested against Drake’s piracies
and his sailing in those waters; but the English Government made a
declaration denying such prescriptive right to the Spaniards, unless it
was enforced by possession. Cf. Camden’s _History of Elizabeth_, 1688,
p. 225; Purchas, iv. 1180; Deane’s edition of Hakluyt’s _Discourse_,
236.—ED.]
[153] “The course which Sir Francis Drake held to California,” etc.
[154] [Mr. Hale has written of Dudley and his atlas in the _American
Antiquarian Society’s Proceedings_, October 21, 1873. Cf. also the
chapter on “New England” in the present volume.—ED.]
[155] See Editorial Notes following this chapter.
[156] [See a later page.—ED.]
[157] Colonel John D. Washburn, in a very careful paper in the _Amer.
Antiq. Soc. Proc._, no. 58, 1872, suspects from Torquemada’s account
(1615, published at Seville), as cited in the English version of Father
Venegas’s _History of California_ (Field, _Indian Bibliography_, 1,599,
1,600), that the port visited by Viscaino was Jack’s Bay, as indeed the
original Spanish of Venegas (iii. III) distinctly says. Cf. also John
T. Doyle’s paper, with an introduction by Colonel Washburn in _Amer.
Antiq. Soc. Proc._, October, 1873.
[158] [They had learned by this time to avoid the head-winds that swept
westerly from Acapulco to Manila, by stretching northeastwardly on the
return voyage, making the coast above San Francisco, and so to follow
the shore south. Cf. the Key to a section of Molineaux’s map in the
Editorial Notes following this chapter.—ED.]
[159] Sayer and Bennett, 1774. [I find this twenty years earlier, as
shown in the annexed sketch from Jefferys’ _Chart of California, New
Albion_, etc., 1753. Key:—
1. C. das Navadas, or Snowy Cape, 2. Punta de los Reys. 3. Les
Farollones. 4. Isles of St. James. 5. Port S^r. Francis Drake, 1578,
not St. Francisco. 6. Pto. de Anno Novo.—ED. ]
[160] “He does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map,
with the augmentation of the Indies.”—_Act iii, sc. 2._ [The map
referred to is Molineaux’ map of 1600, and it has been disputed that it
was the map alluded to by Shakespeare. See chap. vi., Editorial Note,
F. A section showing the point referred to in the text is given further
on.—ED.]
[161] [The coast-survey authorities have usually favored San Francisco.
This was the opinion of Alexander Forbes in his _California_, 1839,
where he gives (p. 127) an interesting view of the bay before commerce
had marked it. Dr. Stillman, in the _Overland Monthly_ (October, 1868,
March, 1869), and later in his _Seeking the Golden Fleece_ (p. 295),
has advocated San Francisco. S. G. Drake, in the _American Historical
Record_, August, 1874, took the same view.
Greenhow, in the second edition (1845) of his _Oregon and California_,
p. 74, does not think the question can be definitely settled between
San Francisco and Bodega.
There have been many disputes over Jack’s Bay,—the Sir Francis
Drake Bay of the maps. Soulé and the writers of the _Annals of San
Francisco_ accept it as the spot; so does Kohl. Professor J. D. Whitney
(_Encyclopædia Britannica_, art. “California”) says the evidence points
strongly to Jack’s Bay.
Vancouver seems to have reported the story of the Spaniards calling it
Sir Francis Drake’s Bay. Captain Beechey thought it too exposed to have
deserved Drake’s description; and it has been held he could not have
graved his ship in it. It is claimed, however, that Limantour’s Bay,
which opens through an inlet westwardly from Jack’s Bay, answers the
required conditions of water and shelter.—ED.]
[162] There are copies in the Library of Congress, and in the New
York State, Harvard, Lenox, and Carter-Brown (ii. 263) libraries.
Cf. Sabin’s _Dictionary_, vol. viii. no. 30,957; Field’s _Indian
Bibliography_, no. 667. Hawkins’s voyage is also included in Purchas’s
_Pilgrimes_; and Charles Kingsley in his _Westward Ho!_ pictures
vividly the spirit of Hawkins’s day. Cf. also Burney’s _History of
Voyages in the South Seas_.
[163] It is reprinted by Vaux, later mentioned.
[164] They are in the Harvard College, Carter-Brown, and Charles Deane
copies, not to name others.
[165] _Brinley Catalogue_, no. 21; Stevens’s _Nuggets_, no. 921;
Sabin’s _Dictionary_, no. 20,853. S. G. Drake bought a copy in Boston
in 1844 for $4. It was priced by Vaux in 1853 at as many pounds, and is
worth much more now. The later editions are worth somewhat less. S. G.
Drake (_Genealogical Register_, i. 126) gives a partial list of those
who accompanied Drake, being about one-third of his one hundred and
sixty-four men. Among the fullest of the modern narratives are those
in Barrow’s _Life of Drake_, and in Froude’s _England_, vol. xi. chap.
29. [But Mr. Froude has used his valuable authorities carelessly. He
depends in part upon some reports of Spanish officers, which exist in
manuscript in Spain, and upon some which are in England, brought home
by English cruisers. One of the most interesting, which should still be
in the national library in Madrid, I found in 1882 had been cut from
the volume and carried away.—E. E. H.]
[166] _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, ii. 423.
[167] Ibid., ii. 731.
[168] Hakluyt, vol. iii., or quarto edition, vol. iv.; Harris, vol. i.;
Oxford, vol. ii. Hakluyt also gives the relation of Nuna da Silva, a
Portuguese pilot whom Drake had captured, and who made his report to
the Viceroy of Spain, and John Winter’s account of his companionship
with Drake. Vaux collates his text with a manuscript preserved in the
British Museum, which may have been the collection of Fletcher’s notes
which the compiler of _The World Encompassed_ used. Several narratives
are also in the Callender collection of _Voyages_, Edinburgh, 1766.
There are German versions in Gottfried and Vander Aa (1727, vol.
xviii.), Cornelius Claesz (1598, 1603), etc. Appended to the _Begin
en Voortgangh_ (1645 and 1646) of Isaac Commelin, of Amsterdam, is
sometimes a Dutch narrative of the voyages of Candish, Drake, and
Hawkins, “described by one of the fleet,” and with an imprint of 1644,
which is very rare. Frederic Muller says, in his _Books on America_,
1872 (no. 1,871), that he had never seen but the one then described,
and another, sold to Stevens in 1867.
A French edition, _Le Voyage de François Drack alentour du Monde_, was
originally issued in Paris in 1613, and is now scarce, and sometimes
priced at 300 francs. There were other editions, with additions, in
1627 (Sabin, vol. v. no. 23,845), 1631, 1641, 1690. Bohn’s _Lowndes_,
p. 668. The Dedicatory Epistle is signed F. de Lorrencourt. Leclerc,
_Bibliotheca Americana_, no. 2,743. The title of the later edition
runs: _Le Voyage curieux faict autour du Monde_, etc. Muller’s
_Books on America_ (1877), no. 973. [This curious book affects in
the dedication to be an original narrative: “I dedicate it to you,
Monsieur, because you gave it to me, telling me that you received it
from one of your subjects of Courtomer, who had made the voyage with
this gentleman.” On examination, however, it proves that the narrative
is a rough translation, not very accurate, and generally abridged from
that in Hakluyt: generally, but not always; for in a few instances
details of local color are added, which I think important, and which
appear, so far as I know, in no other narrative. With no apparent
purpose but to make the book bigger, a second part is added, entitled
_Seconde Partie des Singvlaritez remarquees aux isles et terres fermes
du Midy et des Indes Orientales: par l’Illustre Seigneur et Chevalier
Francois Drach, Admiral d’ Angleterre_. It is a botch of travels in
Africa, the Indian Ocean, and America, in places mostly which Drake
never saw.—E. E. H.]
[169] _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, i. 374; _Brinley Catalogue_, no. 20;
Leclerc, _Bibliotheca Americana_ (205 francs); _Huth Catalogue_, ii.
442. Leclerc, no. 2,744, prices the maps alone at 400 francs; and
Quaritch, in 1877, advertised them for £50. The Lenox Library has a
copy with the four maps, and a second copy with different vignettes on
the title.
[170] Quaritch prices a copy at £10 10_s._; Stevens, Nuggets, puts one
at £5 15_s._ 6_d._ Hakluyt’s third volume (1600) gives the narrative.
In some copies of Hakluyt’s volume of 1589 there is found, before
page 644, a broadside, giving a journal from Drake’s log-book, Sept.
14, 1585, to July 22, 1586. (Sabin, vi. 543.) It was on this voyage
that Drake on his return visited the new settlement in Virginia, as
mentioned in chap. iv. of the present volume.
[171] Quaritch, in 1877, claimed that only three copies of this map
were known, and only four or five complete sets of the other four are
known. The mappemonde is in the Grenville copy, and was in a copy
possessed by Rodd, the London dealer, fifty years ago. Baptista B. (or
Boazio) seems to have been the designer or engraver. There is also a
copy of this fifth map in the Lenox Library.
[172] The _Huth Catalogue_ also gives all five maps to the first
edition (52 pages); says the errata are corrected in the second
edition, and the words “with geographical mappes,” etc., are left out
of the title; while for the third edition (copy in the King’s Library,
in the British Museum) a smaller type is used, contracting it to 37
pages. An edition of 1596 is sometimes cited, but it is doubtful if
such exists. Lowndes mentions a somewhat doubtful French edition of the
same year.
[173] Bohn’s Lowndes, p. 669.
[174] Bare mention may, however, be made of the English accounts, _A
true coppie of a Discourse_, London, 1589, which has been reprinted by
Collier, and Robert Leng’s _Sir Francis Drake’s valuable Service done
against the Spaniards_, in the Camden Society’s _Miscellanies_, vol.
v., and the Latin account, printed at Frankfort, 1590, and a German one
at Munich, the same year. Stevens’s _Bibliotheca Historica_ (1870), no.
597; Bohn’s Lowndes, p. 668.
[175] This name is the Spanish rendering of John Hawkins; and Draque
and Aquines figure also in Torres’ _Relacion de los servicios de
Sotomayor_, Madrid, 1620. Rich (1832), no. 156.
[176] Mr. J. P. Collier printed a small (one hundred copies) fac-simile
edition of the 1596 book; but most of the copies were destroyed by
fire. _A full Relation_ of this voyage, dated 1652, was included in the
1653 edition of _Sir Francis Drake Revived_, and is sometimes found
separately; _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, ii. 753.
[177] There were other Dutch editions in 1643 (called by Muller
the best; cf. Carter-Brown Catalogue, ii. 521, for _Journalen van
drie Voyagien_) and 1644. A German account was added in 1598 to the
narrative of Candish’s voyages, printed at Amsterdam. _Carter-Brown
Catalogue_, i. no. 520. The rendering in De Bry, part viii., is
incorrect and incomplete.
[178] Rich (1832), no. 294, £1 8_s._; Sunderland, ii. 4,052; Huth, ii.
p. 444; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 312. There is a copy in Charles
Deane’s collection. It is worth £6 or £7.
[179] The _Grenville Catalogue_ errs in making this the first edition.
Huth, ii. 444; Brinley, i. 49; Carter-Brown, ii. 332.
[180] Sunderland, vol. ii. no. 4,053; Huth, ii. 444; Carter-Brown, vol.
ii. no. 753. There is also a copy in Harvard College Library.
[181] Reprinted in 1819, at the Lee Priory press, by Sir Egerton
Brydges.
[182] Sabin (_Dictionary_, iv. 13,445) says the title differs in some
copies. _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, ii. 1,056.
[183] For a Drake bibliography we must go to Sabin’s _Dictionary_, v.
20,827, etc., and Bohn’s Lowndes. Stevens (_Historical Collections_,
vol. i. no. 202) notes a collection of copies from manuscripts in
public depositaries in England which had been brought together as
materials for writing a memoir of Drake. As a Devonshire hero, Drake
figures in the local literature of Plymouth and its neighborhood.
[184] Cf. _Journalen van drie Voyagien_, which covers both Drake
and Cavendish’s expeditions, and Commelin’s _Begin ende Voortgang_,
and the collection of Gottfried and Vander Aa (1727). Thomas Lodge,
the Elizabethan dramatist, accompanied Candish in his voyage of
circumnavigation, and translated upon it, from the Spanish, his
_Margarite of America_, published in London in 1596. Sabin’s
_Dictionary_, x. 41,765; Bohn’s Lowndes, p. 1,383.
[185] [Cf. map given on page 11.—ED.]
[186] [Cf. the Lenox Globe and other delineations, in chap. vi.—ED.]
[187] [Chap. i., by Charles Deane.—ED.]
[188] Collinson’s _Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_, p. 72; Hakluyt’s
_Voyages_ (ed. 1600), iii. 58.
[189] Collinson’s _Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_, p. 75; Hakluyt’s
_Voyages_, iii. 59.
[190] Collinson’s _Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_, p. 119.
[191] Ibid., p. 242; Hakluyt’s _Voyages_, iii. 80.
[192] In his first expedition to seek for traces of Sir John Franklin,
1860-1862, our countryman, Captain Charles F. Hall, obtained and
brought home numerous relics of Frobisher’s voyages. Some of these were
sent to England, and others are deposited in the National Museum at
Washington. See Hall’s _Arctic Researches, passim_; Collinson’s _Three
Voyages_, etc., Appendix; and _the Semi-Annual Report of the Council of
the American Antiquarian Society_, October, 1882.
[193] [See Dr. De Costa’s chapter, and Gilbert’s map and comments in
Editorial Note A, _sub anno_ 1576, at the end, and also the notes at
the end of Mr. Henry’s chapter.—ED.]
[194] _Northwest Fox_, p. 42.
[195] Letter to Mr. Sanderson, in Hakluyt’s _Voyages_, iii. 114.
[196] Rundall’s _Narratives of Voyages towards the Northwest_, p. 62.
[197] _Northwest Fox_, p. 50.
[198] _Northwest Fox_, p. 117. The documents relating to Hudson’s
fourth voyage are in Purchas’s _Pilgrimes_, iii. 596-610, and in
Asher’s _Henry Hudson, the Navigator_, pp. 93-138.
[199] _Northwest Fox_, pp. 117, 118.
[200] Ibid., p. 118.
[201] _Northwest Fox_, p. 244.
[202] [The reader may consult the following, which has a parallel
English text: _Die Literatur über die Polar-regionem der Erde_. Von J.
Chavanne, A. Karpf, F. Ritter v. Le Monnier. Herausg. von der K. K.
geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien. Wien, 1878, xiv. + 333 pp., 8º.
This book shows 6,617 titles, including papers from serials and
periodicals. It is far from judiciously compiled, however; containing
much that is irrelevant, and not a little that indicates the compilers’
ignorance of the books in hand, as when they were entrapped from
the title into including Dibdin’s _Northern Tour_ and other works
equally foreign to the subject. One of the best collections of
Arctic literature in this country is in the Carter-Brown Library at
Providence; and this, putting strict limits to the subject and not
including papers of a periodic character, shows a list of between six
and seven hundred titles. _Letter of John R. Bartlett_.—ED.]
[203] _A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions;
undertaken chiefly for the Purpose of discovering a Northeast,
Northwest, or Polar Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific: from the
earliest Period of Scandinavian Navigation to the Departure of the
recent Expeditions under the Orders of Captains Ross and Buchan._ By
John Barrow, F. R. S. London: John Murray. 1818. 8º. pp. 379 and 48.
[204] _Narratives of Voyages towards the Northwest, in Search of a
Passage to Cathay and India, 1496 to 1631. With Selections from the
Early Records of the Honourable the East India Company, and from MSS.
in the British Museum._ By Thomas Rundall, Esq. London: Printed for the
Hakluyt Society. 1849. 8º. pp. xx. and 260.
[This book has a convenient map of Arctic explorations between 1496 and
1631. The general reader will find condensed historical summaries of
antecedent voyages, often prefixed to the special narratives, as in the
case of Captain Beechey’s _Voyage of Discovery towards the North Pole_,
1843, and in the introductions to Asher’s _Henry Hudson_ and Winter
Jones’s edition of Hakluyt’s _Divers Voyages_.—ED.]
[205] [Cf., for instance, Muller’s _Geschiedenis der noordsche
Compagnie_, 1614-1642. Utrecht, 1875.—ED.]
[206] _The three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, in Search of a Passage
to Cathaia and India by the Northwest, A. D. 1576-78. Reprinted
from the First Edition of Hakluyt’s Voyages, with Selections from
Manuscript Documents in the British Museum and State-Paper Office._ By
Rear-Admiral Richard Collinson, C. B. London: Printed for the Hakluyt
Society. 1867. 8º. pp. xxvi. and 376.
[207] _The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator._ Edited,
with an Introduction and Notes, by Albert Hastings Markham, Captain R.
N., F. R. G. S., Author of _A Whaling Cruise in Baffin’s Bay_, _The
Great Frozen Sea_, and _Northward Ho!_ London: Printed for the Hakluyt
Society. 1880. 8º. pp. xcv. and 392.
[This volume gives a fac-simile of the Molineaux map of 1600; and
reprints Davis’s _Worlde’s Hydrographical Description_, London, 1595.
The presentation copy to Prince Henry, with his arms and a very curious
manuscript addition, is in the Lenox Library. Cf. John Petheram’s
_Bibliographical Miscellany_, 1859, and the note, p. 51, in Rundall’s
_Voyages to the Northwest_. In this last book the accounts in Hakluyt
are reproduced. Respecting Davis’s maps, see Kohl’s _Catalogue of Maps
in Hakluyt_, pp. 20, 27.—ED.]
[208] _Henry Hudson, the Navigator. The Original Documents in which his
Career is recorded, collected, partly translated, and annotated, with
an Introduction._ By G. M. Asher, LL.D. London: Printed for the Hakluyt
Society. 1860. 8º. pp. ccxviii. and 292. See Editorial Notes.
[209] _The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622._ Edited, with Notes
and an Introduction, by Clements R. Markham, C.B., F.R.S. London:
Printed for the Hakluyt Society. 1881. 8º. pp. lix. and 192.
[Purchas first printed Baffin’s narrative of his first voyage, and
Rundall re-edited it, supplying omissions from the original manuscript
preserved in the British Museum. Markham reprints it, and adds a
fac-simile of Baffin’s map of his discoveries; and he also gives a
series of five maps from Fox’s down (the first is reproduced in the
text), to show the changes in ideas respecting the shape and even
the existence of Baffin’s Bay. Of the voyage in which this water was
discovered, Purchas also printed, and Markham has reprinted, the
account as given in Baffin’s journal.—ED.]
[210] _North-West Fox, or, Fox from the Northwest passage. Beginning
With King Arthur, Malga, Octhvr, the two Zenis of Iseland, Estotiland,
and Dorgia; Following with brief Abstracts of the Voyages of Cabot,
Frobisher, Davis, Waymouth, Knight, Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot,
Baffin, Hawkridge; Together with the Courses, Distance, Latitudes,
Longitudes, Variations, Depths of Seas, Sets of Tydes, Currents, Races,
and over-Falls, with other Observations, Accidents, and Remarkable
things, as our Miseries and Sufferings. Mr. Iames Hall’s three Voyages
to Groynland, with a Topographicall description of the Countries, the
Salvages lives and Treacheries, how our Men have been slayne by them
there, with the Commodities of all those parts; whereby the Marchant
may have Trade, and the Mariner Imployment. Demonstrated in a Polar
Card, wherein are all the Maines, Seas, and Islands, herein mentioned.
With the Author his owne Voyage, being the XIVth, with the opinions and
Collections of the most famous Mathematicians, and Cosmographers; with
a Probabilitie to prove the same by Marine Remonstrations, compared
by the Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea, experimented with places of our
owne Coast._ By Captaine Lvke Fox, of Kingstone vpon Hull, Capt. and
Pylot for the Voyage in his Majesties Pinnace the Charles. Printed by
his Majesties Command. London, Printed by B. Alsop and Tho. Fawcett,
dwelling in Grubstreet. 1635. 4º. pp. x. and 273.
[This little book is now worth about $40 or $50; Rich priced it in 1832
at $10. Brinley, no. 27; Huth, ii. 542; Field’s _Indian Bibliography_,
no. 556. Cf. _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, October, 1878. The copy in
the Dowse _Collection_ (Mass. Hist. Soc.) has the rare original map.
The Menzies and Carter-Brown copies show the map; the Brinley lacked
it, as does Mr. Deane’s, which has it in fac-simile.—ED.]
[211] The name _Ralegh_ was written in thirteen different ways. We
have adopted the usual spelling of Sir Walter himself. See Hakluyt’s
_Westerne Planting_, p. 171, and C. W. Tuttle in _Massachusetts
Historical Society’s Proceedings_, xv. 383.
[212] [See chapter vi.—ED.]
[213] See Chalmer’s _Annals_, chaps. xiv. and xv., and Journals of
Congress, October, 1774.
[214] [It was in 1584 that Hakluyt wrote for Ralegh his _Westerne
Planting_, to be used in inducing Elizabeth to grant to Ralegh and
his friends a charter to colonize America; and Dr. Woods, in his
Introduction to that book, writes, p. xliii, of Ralegh as the founder
of the transatlantic colonies of Great Britain. See the history of the
MS. in the notes following Dr. De Costa’s chapter.—ED.]
[215] Strachey, Hakluyt Society’s Publications, vi. 85.
[216] See _Works_ of Bacon, edited by Basil Montague, ii. 525.
[217] [It was prefixed to an edition of Ralegh’s _History of the World_
in 1736.—ED.]
[218] [One was added to an edition of Ralegh’s _Works_ in 1751.—ED.]
[219] [This work was in two volumes, 4º, and appeared in a second
edition in 1806, 8º.—ED.]
[220] [_History of England_, chapters xlv. and xlviii.—ED.]
[221] A paper read by George Dexter, Esq., before the Massachusetts
Historical Society, Oct. 13, 1881, upon “The First Voyage under Sir
Humphrey Gilbert’s Patent of 1578,” corrects an error into which Mr.
Edwards had fallen about this voyage, and shows that it was undertaken
in 1578 instead of 1579, as stated by Mr. Edwards, and that Ralegh was
the captain of one of the vessels. A few additional references may
serve the curious student. Some new material was first brought forward
in the _Archæologia_, vols. xxxiv. and xxxv. Ralegh’s career in Ireland
is followed in the _Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1881. His last year is
considered in Gardiner’s _Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage_. A
contemporary account of his execution from Adam Winthrop’s note-book is
printed in the _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, Sept. 1873. A psychological
study may be found in Disraeli’s _Amenities of Literature_. Two
American essays may be mentioned,—that in Belknap’s _American
Biography_, and J. Morrison Harris’s paper before the Maryland
Historical Society in 1846.
As to the story at one time prevalent of Ralegh’s coming in person to
his colony, Stith, _History of Virginia_, p. 22, thinks it arose from
a mistranslation of the Latin. Cf. Force’s _Tracts_ i. p. 37, Georgia
Tract, 1742,—“Mr. Oglethorpe has with him Sir Walter Ralegh’s written
journal,” etc.—ED.
[222] [The sources for this first colony may be concisely enumerated as
follows:—
1. Diary of the Voyage, April 9-Aug. 25, 1585, originally in Hakluyt,
1589; also in Hawks.
2. Ralph Lane’s letters, Aug. and Sept. 1585. Some in Hakluyt, vol.
iii.; also in Hawks and others referred to in the text, edited by E. E.
Hale, in the _Archæologia Americana_, vol. iv. (1860).
3. Hariot’s narrative originally published in 1588; then by Hakluyt in
1589; and by De Bry in 1590. See later note.
4. Lane’s narrative given in Hakluyt and Hawks.
5. _A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian
Voyage_, London, 1589; also in Hakluyt, 1600. The copy of the former
in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Library was the one used by
Prince; see ch. ii.; also Barrow’s _Life of Drake_, ch. vi. Mr. Edward
C. Bruce, in his “Loungings in the Footprints of the Pioneers,” in
_Harper’s Monthly_, May, 1860, describes the condition of the site of
the colony at that time. Roanoke Island was sold to Joshua Lamb, of New
England, in 1676; _Hist. Mag._ vi. 123. Cf. _Continental Monthly_, i.
541, by Frederic Kidder.—ED.]
[223] [A notice of the original English issue of Hariot (1588) is
described on a later page as the second original production relating
to America presented to the English public (see notes following Dr. De
Costa’s chapter); but it became more widely known in 1590, when De Bry
at Frankfort made it the only part of his famous Collection of Voyages,
which he printed in the English tongue, giving it the following
title: _A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia,
of the commodities, and of the nature and manners of the naturall
inhabitants_. _Discovered by the English colony there seated by Sir
Richard Greinuile in the yeere 1585.... This forebooke is made in
English by Thomas Hariot. Francoforti ad Moenvm, typis Joannis Wecheli,
svmtibus vero Theodori de Bry_, cicicxc. It is also the rarest of the
parts, and only a few copies of it are known, as follows:—
1. Carter-Brown Library. _Catalogue_, i. 397, where a fac-simile of the
title is given.
2. Lenox Library.
3. Sold in the Stevens Sale (no. 2487), Boston, 1870, to a New York
collector for $975. This was made perfect by despoiling another copy
belonging to a public collection.
4. Harvard College Library; imperfect.