documentary and contemporary. As for John Cabot, Sebastian said he died,
which is one of the few undisputed facts in the discussion; but if
Sebastian is correctly reported in Ramusio to have said that he died at
the time when the news of Columbus' discoveries reached England, then
Sebastian Cabot told an untruth, because the letters-patent of 1498 were
addressed to John Cabot alone. The son had a gift of reticence concerning
others, including his father and brothers, which in these latter days has
been the cause of much wearisome research to scholars. To avoid further
discussion of the preceding points is, however, a great gain.
From among the numerous opinions concerning the landfall of John Cabot
three theories emerge which may be seriously entertained, all three being
supported by evidence of much weight: 1. That it was in Newfoundland. 2.
That it was on the Labrador coast. 3. That it was on the island of Cape
Breton.
Until a comparatively recent period it was universally held by English
writers that Newfoundland was the part of North America first seen by
Cabot. The name "Newfoundland" lends itself to this view; for in the
letters-patent of 1498 the expression "Londe and iles of late founde,"
and the wording of the award recorded in the King's privy-purse accounts,
August 10, 1497, "To hym that founde the new ile £I0," seem naturally to
suggest the island of Newfoundland of our day; and this impression
is strengthened by reading the old authors, who spell it, as Richard
Whitbourne in 1588, "New-found-land," in three words with connecting
hyphens, and often with the definite article, "The Newe-found-land." A
cursory reading of the whole literature of American discovery before
1831 would suggest that idea, and some writers of the present day still
maintain it. Authors of other nationalities have, however, always
disputed it, and have pushed the English discoveries far north to
Labrador, and even to Greenland. Champlain, who read and studied
everything relating to his profession, concedes to the English the coast
of Labrador north of 56° and the regions about Davis Straits; and the
maps, which for a long period, with a few notable exceptions, were
made only by Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians, bear out Champlain's
remonstrances. It seems, moreover, on a cursory consideration of the
maps, probable that a vessel on a westerly course passing south of
Ireland should strike somewhere on the coast of Newfoundland about Cape
Bonavista, and, Cabot being an Italian, that very place suggests itself
by its name as his probable landfall. The English, who for the most part
have had their greatness thrust upon them by circumstances, neglected
Cabot's discoveries for fifty years, and during that time the French and
Portuguese took possession of the whole region and named all the coasts;
then, when the troubled reign of Henry VIII was over, the English people
began to wake up, and in fact rediscovered Cabot and his voyages. A
careful study, however, of the subject will be likely to lead to the
rejection of the Newfoundland landfall, plausible as it may at first
sight appear.
In the year 1831 Richard Biddle, a lawyer of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,
published a memoir of Sebastian Cabot which led the way to an almost
universal change of opinion. He advanced the theory that Labrador was the
Cabot landfall in 1497. His book is one of great research, and, though
confused in its arrangement, is written with much vigor and ability. But
Biddle lost the historian in the advocate. His book is a passionate brief
for Sebastian Cabot; for he strangely conceives the son to have been
wronged by the ascription to John Cabot of any portion of the merit of
the discovery of America. Not only would he suppress the elder Cabot, but
he covers the well-meaning Hakluyt with opprobrium and undermines his
character by insinuations, much as a criminal lawyer might be supposed to
do to an adverse witness in a jury trial. Valuable as the work is, there
is a singular heat pervading it, fatal to the true historic spirit.
Hakluyt is the pioneer of the literature of English discovery and
adventure--at once the recorder and inspirer of noble effort. He is more
than a translator; he spared no pains nor expense to obtain from the lips
of seamen their own versions of their voyages, and, if discrepancies are
met with in a collection so voluminous, it is not surprising and need not
be ascribed to a set purpose; for Hakluyt's sole object in life seems
to have been to record all he knew or could ascertain of the maritime
achievements of the age.
Biddle's book marks an epoch in the controversy. In truth, he seems to
be the first who gave minute study to the original authorities and broke
away from the tradition of Newfoundland. He fixed the landfall on the
coast of Labrador; and Humboldt and Kohl added the weight of their great
learning to his theory. Harrisse, who in his _John and Sebastian Cabot_
had written in favor of Cape Breton, has, in his latest book, _The
Discovery of America_, gone back to Labrador as his faith in the
celebrated map of 1544 gradually waned and his esteem for the character
of Sebastian Cabot faded away. Such changes of view, not only in this
but in other matters, render Mr. Harrisse's books somewhat confusing,
although the student of American history can never be sufficiently
thankful for his untiring research.
The discovery in Germany by von Martius in 1843 of an engraved
_mappemonde_ bearing date of 1544, and purporting to be issued under the
authority of Sebastian Cabot, soon caused a general current of opinion in
favor of a landfall in Cape Breton. The map is unique and is now in the
National Library at Paris. It bears no name of publisher nor place of
publication. Around it for forty years controversy has waxed warm. Kohl
does not accept the map as authentic; D'Avezac, on the contrary, gives it
full credence. The tide of opinion has set of late in favor of it, and
in consequence in favor of the Cape Breton landfall, because it bears,
plainly inscribed upon that island, the words "_prima tierra vista_," and
the legends which are around the map identify beyond question that as
the landfall of the first voyage. Dr. Deane, in _Winter's Narrative and
Critical History,_ supports this view. Markham, in his introduction to
the volume of the Hakluyt Society for 1893, also accepts it; and our
own honorary secretary (the late Sir John Bourinot), in his learned and
exhaustive monograph on Cape Breton, inclines to the same theory.
I do not propose here to discuss the difficult problems of this map.
For many years, under the influence of current traditions and cursory
reading, I believe the landfall of John Cabot to have been in
Newfoundland; but a closer study of the original authorities has led me
to concur in the view which places it somewhere on the island of Cape
Breton.
At the threshold of an inquiry into the "_prima tierra vista_" or
landfall of 1497, it is before all things necessary to distinguish
sharply, in every recorded detail, between the first and second voyages.
I venture to think that, if this had always been done, much confusion
and controversy would have been avoided. It was not done by the older
writers, and the writers of later years have followed them without
sufficiently observing that the authorities they were building upon were
referring almost solely to the second voyage. Even when some occasional
detail of the first voyage was introduced, the circumstances of the
second voyage were interwoven and became dominant in the narrative, so
that the impression of one voyage only remains upon the mind. We must
therefore always remember the antithesis which exists between them. Thus,
the first voyage was made in one small vessel with a crew of eighteen
men, the second with five ships and three hundred men. The first voyage
was undertaken with John Cabot's own resources, the second with the royal
authority to take six ships and their outfit on the same conditions as
if for the King's service. The first voyage was a private venture, the
second an official expedition. The first voyage extended over three
months and was provisioned for that period only; the second was
victualled for twelve months and extended over six months at least, for
how much longer is not known. The course of the first voyage was south of
Ireland, then for a while north and afterward west, with the pole star on
the right hand. The course of the second, until land was seen, was north,
into northern seas, toward the north pole, in the direction of Iceland,
to the cape of Labrador, at 58° north latitude. On the first voyage no
ice was reported; on the second the leading features were bergs and floes
of ice and long days of arctic summer. On the first voyage Cabot saw no
man; on the second he found people clothed with "beastes skynnes." During
the whole of the first voyage John Cabot was the commander; on the second
voyage he sailed in command, but who brought the expedition home and when
it returned are not recorded. It is not known how or when John Cabot
died; and, although the letters-patent for the second voyage were
addressed to him alone, his son Sebastian during forty-five years took
the whole credit in every subsequent mention of the discovery of America,
without any allusion to his father. This antithesis may throw light upon
the suppression of his father's name in all the statements attributed to
or made by Sebastian Cabot. He may always have had the second voyage in
his mind. His father may have died on the voyage. He was marvellously
reticent about his father. The only mention which occurs is on the map
seen by Hakluyt, and on the map of 1544, supposed, somewhat rashly, to be
a transcript of it. There the discovery is attributed to John Cabot and
to Sebastian his son, and that has reference to the first voyage. From
these considerations it would appear that those who place the landfall
at Labrador are right; but it is the landfall of the second voyage--the
voyage Sebastian was always talking about--not the landfall of John Cabot
in 1497.
If Sebastian Cabot had not been so much wrapped up in his own vainglory,
we might have had a full record of the eventful voyage which revealed to
Europe the shores of our Canadian dominion first of all the lands on the
continents of the western hemisphere. Fortunately, however, there resided
in London at that time a most intelligent Italian, Raimondo di Soncino,
envoy of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, one of those despots of the
Renaissance who almost atoned for their treachery and cruelty by their
thirst for knowledge and love of arts. Him Soncino kept informed of
all matters going on at London, and especially concerning matters of
cosmography, to which the Duke was much devoted. From his letters we are
enabled to retrace the momentous voyage of the little Matthew of Bristol
across the western ocean--not the sunny region of steady trade-winds, by
whose favoring influence Columbus was wafted to his destination, but the
boisterous reaches of the northern Atlantic--over that "still vexed sea"
which shares with one or two others the reputation of being the most
storm-tossed region in the world of ocean. That the land discovered was
supposed to be a part of Asia appears very clearly from the same letters.
It was in the territory of the Grand Cam. The land was good and the
climate temperate; and Cabot intended on his next voyage, after occupying
that place, to proceed farther westward until he should arrive at the
longitude of Japan, which island he evidently thought to be south of his
landfall and near the equator.
It should be carefully noted that, in all the circumstances on record
which are indisputably referable to this first voyage, nothing has been
said of ice or of any notable extension of daylight. These are the marks
of the second voyage; for if anything unusual had existed in the length
of the day it would have been at its maximum on Midsummer's Day, June
24th, the day he made land. Nothing is reported in these letters which
indicates a high latitude. Now Labrador is a cold, waste region of rocks,
swamps, and mountains. Even inside the Straits of Belle-Isle it is so
barren and forbidding as to call forth Cartier's oft-cited remark that
"it was like the land God gave to Cain." The coast of Labrador is not the
place to invite a second voyage, if it be once seen; but the climate of
Cape Breton is very pleasant in early summer and the country is well
wooded.
From the contemporary documents relating specially to the first voyage,
it is beyond question that Cabot saw no human being on the coast, though
he brought back evidences of their presence at some previous time. It is
beyond doubt, also, on the same authority, that the voyage lasted not
longer than three months, and that provisions gave out, so that he had
not time to land on the return voyage. It was, in fact, a reconnoitring
expedition to prepare the way for a greater effort, and establish
confidence in the existence of land across the ocean easily reached from
England. The distance sailed is given by Soncino at four hundred leagues;
but Pasqualigo, writing to Venice, gives it at seven hundred leagues,
equivalent to two thousand two hundred twenty-six miles, which is very
nearly the distance between Bristol and Cape Breton as now estimated.
All these circumstances concerning the first voyage are derived from John
Cabot's own reports, and are extracted from documents dated previous to
the return of the second expedition, and therefore are, of necessity,
free from admixture with extraneous incidents. Antonio Galvano, an
experienced Portuguese sailor and cosmographer, writing in 1563, like the
others, knows of one voyage only, which he fixes in 1496. He interweaves,
like them, in his narrative many circumstances of the second voyage, but
it is important to note that from some independent source is given the
landfall at 45°, the latitude very nearly of Cape Breton, on the island
of Cape Breton. Another point is also recorded in the letters that, on
the return voyage, Cabot passed two islands to the right, which the
shortness of his provisions prevented him from examining. This note
should not be considered identical with the statement recorded by Soncino
in his first letter, for this last writer evidently means to indicate the
land which Cabot found and examined; he says that Cabot discovered two
large and fertile islands, but the two islands of Pasqualigo were passed
without examination. They were probably the islands of St. Pierre and
Miquelon; but that John Cabot had no idea of a northward voyage at that
time in his mind would appear from his intention to sail farther to
the east on his next voyage until he reached the longitude of Cipango.
Moreover, the reward recorded in the King's privy-purse accounts "to hym
that founde the new ile," and the wording, thrice repeated, of the second
letters-patent, "the land and isles of late found by the said John,"
indicate that it was not at that time known whether the mainland of
Cathay had been reached, or, as in the discoveries of Columbus, islands
upon the coast of Asia.
From the preceding narrative, based solely upon documents written within
twelve months of the event--which documents are records of statements
taken from the lips of John Cabot, the chief actor, at the very time of
his return from the first voyage--it will, I trust, appear that in 1497,
at a time of year when the ice was not clear from the coasts of Labrador,
he discovered a part of America in a temperate climate, and that this
was done without the name of Sebastian Cabot once coming to the surface,
excepting when it appears in the patent of 1496, together with the names
of Lewis and Sancio, his brothers. While the circumstances recorded
are incompatible with a landfall at Labrador, they do not exclude the
possibility of a landfall on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, which is
so varied in its character as to correspond with almost any conditions
likely to be found in a landfall on the American coast; but inasmuch as,
from other reasons, it will, I think, appear that the landfall was at
Cape Breton, it will be a shorter process to prove by a positive argument
where it was than to show by a negative argument where it was not.
I might here borrow the quaint phrase of Herodotus and say, "Now I have
done speaking of" John Cabot. He has, beyond doubt, discovered the
eastern coast of this our Canada, and he has organized a second
expedition, and he has sailed in command. Forthwith, upon such sailing,
he vanishes utterly, and his second son, Sebastian, both of his brothers
having in some unknown way also vanished, emerges, and from henceforth
becomes the whole Cabot family. It behooves us, therefore, if we wish to
grasp the whole subject, to inquire what manner of man he was.
Sebastian Cabot was born in Venice, and, when still very young, was
taken to England with the rest of his family by his father. He was then,
however, old enough to have learned the humanities and the properties of
the sphere, and to this latter knowledge he became so addicted that he,
early in life, formed fixed ideas. He is probably entitled to the merit
of having urged the practical application of the truths that the shortest
course from point to point upon the globe lies upon a great circle, and
also that the great circle uniting Western Europe with Cathay passes over
the north pole. This fixed idea of the younger Cabot pervaded all his
life and shows in all his reported conversations. He adhered to it with
the pertinacity of a Columbus, and, in his later life after his return
to England, his efforts, which in youth were directed to a northwest
passage, went out toward a northeast passage to Cathay. John Cabot's
genius was more practical, as the second letter of Raimondo di Soncino
shows. His intention was to occupy on the second voyage the landfall
he had made and then push on to the east (west, as we call it now) and
south. The diversion of that expedition to the coast of Labrador would
indicate that the death of the elder Cabot and the assumption of command
by his son occurred early in the voyage. Sebastian Cabot seems to have
been not so much a great sailor as a great nautical theorizer. Gomara
says he discovered nothing for Spain; and beyond doubt his expedition to
La Plata cannot be considered successful, for it was intended to reach
the Moluccas. One fixed idea of his life was the course to Cathay by the
north. That idea he monopolized to himself. He overvalued its importance
and thought to be the Columbus of a new highway to the east. Hence he
may have underrated his father's achievements as he brooded over what he
considered to be his own great secret. He theorized on the sphere and he
theorized on the variation of the compass, and he theorized on a method
of finding longitude by the variation of the needle; so that even Richard
Eden, who greatly admired him, wrote as follows: "Sebastian Cabot on
his death-bed told me that he had the knowledge thereof (longitude by
variation) by divine revelation, yet so that he might not teach any man.
But I thinke that the goode olde man in that extreme age somewhat doted,
and had not, yet even in the article of death, utterly shaken off all
worldlye vaine glorie." These words would seem to contain the solution
of most of the mystery of the suppression of John Cabot's name in the
narratives of Peter Martyr, Ramusio, Gomara, and all the other writers
who derived their information from Sebastian Cabot during his long
residence in Spain.
And now we may pass on to the consideration of the second voyage; and
first among the writers, in order of time as also in order of importance,
is Peter Martyr of Anghiera, who published his _Decades of the New World_
in 1516. Sebastian Cabot had then been in Spain for four years, high in
office and in royal favor. Peter Martyr was his "familiar friend and
comrade," and tells the Pope, to whom these _Decades_ were addressed as
letters, that he wrote from information derived from Cabot's own lips.
Here, I venture to think, many of the writers on this subject have gone
astray; for the whole question changes. Martyr knows of only one voyage,
and that was beyond doubt the voyage of 1498; he knows of only one
discoverer, and that the man from whose lips he writes the narrative. The
landfall is far north, in a region of ice and perpetual daylight. At the
very outset the subject is stated to be "those northern seas," and then
Peter Martyr goes on to say that Sebastian Cabot furnished two ships at
his own charges; and that, with three hundred men, he sailed toward the
north pole, where he saw land, and that then he was compelled to turn
westward; and after that he coasted to the south until he reached the
latitude of Gibraltar; and that he was west of the longitude of Cuba.
In other words, he struck land far in the north, and from that point he
sailed south along the coast as far as Cape Hatteras. That Labrador was
the landfall seems clear; for he met large masses of ice in the month of
July. These were not merely the bergs of the western ocean, but masses of
field-ice, which compelled him to change his course from north to west,
and finally to turn southward. The same writer states that Cabot himself
named a portion of the great land he coasted "Baccalaos," because of the
quantity of fish, which was so great that they hindered the sailing of
his ships, and that these fishes were called baccalaos by the natives.
This statement has given rise to much dispute. As to the quantity
of fish, all succeeding writers concur that it was immense beyond
conception; and probably the swarming of the salmon up the rivers of our
Pacific coast may afford a parallel; but that Cabot did not so name the
country is abundantly clear. A very exhaustive note on the word will be
found at page 131 of Dr. Bourinot's _Cape Breton_.
Bearing in mind the preceding considerations, the study of the early
maps will become profitable, and I would now direct attention to them to
ascertain what light they may throw upon the landfall of John Cabot and
the island of St. John opposite to it. It must be remembered that John
Cabot took the time to go on shore at his landfall, and planted the
banners of England and St. Mark there. At that time of year and in that
latitude it was light at half-past three, but it was five when he saw
land, and he had to reach it and perform the ceremonies appropriate for
such occasions; so the island opposite could not be far away. The island,
then, will be useful to identify the landfall if we find it occurring
frequently on the succeeding maps.
Don Pedro de Ayala, joint Spanish ambassador at London, wrote, on July
25, 1498, to his sovereigns that he had procured and would send a copy of
John Cabot's chart of his first voyage. This map of Juan de la Cosa is
evidence that Ayala fulfilled his promise. It is a manuscript map made at
the end of the year 1500, by the eminent Biscayan pilot, who, if not the
equal of Columbus in nautical and cosmographical knowledge, was easily
the second to him. Upon it there is a continuous coast line from Labrador
to Florida, showing that the claim made by Sebastian Cabot of having
coasted from a region of ice and snow to the latitude of Gibraltar was
accepted as true by La Cosa, whatever later Spanish writers may have
said. Recent writers of authority have arrived at the conclusion that,
immediately after Columbus and Cabot had opened the way, many independent
adventurers visited the western seas; for there are a number of
geographical facts recorded on the earliest charts not easy to account
for on any other hypothesis. Dr. Justin Winsor shows that La Cosa, and
others of the great sailors of the earliest years of discovery, soon
recognized that they had encountered a veritable barrier to Asia,
consisting of islands, or an island of continental size, through which
they had to find a passage to the golden East. Their views were not,
however, generally accepted.