THE CABOT VOYAGES—SEBASTIAN CABOT, ? 1499
The voyage of Sebastian Cabot is described in narratives of which the
details were presumably furnished by himself, in the works of various
historians of the sixteenth century. As in the previous chapter, the
necessary extracts will be given first, followed by a consideration of
the conclusions to which they lead. Many other authors, besides those
quoted, mention Sebastian Cabot; but, since they merely reproduce
earlier accounts without providing any new evidence of their own, it is
unnecessary to refer to them here.
Peter Martyr, in his _Decades of the New World_, of which the first
part, containing the notice of Cabot,[57] was published at Alcala in
1516, says:
‘These North Seas have been searched by one Sebastian Cabot, a
Venetian borne.... Hee therefore furnished two ships in England at his
owne charges, and first with 300 men directed his course so farre
towards the North pole, that even in the moneth of July he found
monstrous heapes of ice swimming in the sea, and in maner continuall
daylight, yet saw he the land in that tract free from ice, which had
been molten by the heat of the Sunne. Thus seeing such heapes of yce
before him, hee was enforced to turne his sailes and follow the West,
so coasting still by the shore, that he was thereby brought so farre
into the South by reason of the land bending so much southwards, that
it was there almost equall in latitude with the sea Fretum Herculeum,
having the North pole elevate in maner in the same degree. He sailed
likewise in this tract so farre towards the West, that hee had the
Island of Cuba on his left hand, in maner in the same degree of
longitude. As hee travailed by the coasts of this great land, (which
he named Baccalaos), he saith that he found the like course of waters
toward the West, but the same to runne more softly and gently then the
swift waters which the Spaniards found in their navigations
Southward.... Sebastian Cabot himselfe named these lands Baccalaos,
because that in the seas thereabout hee found so great multitudes of
certaine bigge fishes much like unto Tunies (which the inhabitants
call Baccalaos) that they sometime stayed his shippes. He found also
the people of those regions covered with beastes’ skinnes, yet not
without the use of reason. He also saith that there is great plentie
of Beares in those regions, which use to eate fish.... Hee declareth
further, that in many places of these regions he saw greate plentie of
Copper among the inhabitants. Cabot is my very friend, whom I use
familiarly, and delight to have him sometimes keepe mee company in
mine owne house. For being called out of England by commandment of the
Catholique King of Castile, after the death of King Henry the seventh
of that name in England, he was made one of our councill and
Assistants, as touching the affaires of the new Indies, looking for
ships dayly to be furnished for him to discover the hid secret of
Nature. Some of the Spaniards deny that Cabot was the first finder of
the land of Baccalaos, and affirm that he went not so far westwards.’
Lopes de Gomara, _Historia General de las Indias_, 1554.[58]
‘Sebastian Cabot was the first that brought any knowledge of this land
for, being in England in the days of King Henry VII, he furnished two
ships at his own charges or, as some say, at the King’s, whom he
persuaded that a passage might be found to Cathay by the North Sea....
He went also to know what manner of land those Indies were to inhabit.
He had with him three hundred men, and directed his course by the
track of Iceland, upon the cape of Labrador, at 58 degrees—though he
himself says much more—affirming that in the month of July there was
such cold and heaps of ice that he durst pass no further; that the
days were very long, and in manner without night, and the nights very
clear. Certain it is that at 60 degrees the longest day is of 18
hours. But considering the cold and the strangeness of the unknown
land, he turned his course from thence to the west, refreshing
themselves at Baccalaos; and following the coast of the land unto the
38th degree, he returned to England.’
Giovanni Battista Ramusio, _Navigations_. Three volumes published at
Venice in 1550, 1559, and 1556 respectively.
(α) In vol. i occurs the following relation by a ‘Mantuan
gentleman’,[59] whose name has never been discovered (Eden falsely
identified him with Galeacius Butrigarius, Papal Legate in Spain),
speaking to a company of Venetians in the house of Hieronimus Fracastor:
‘Finding himself in the city of Seville a few years ago, and desiring
to know about those navigations from the Castillians, he was told that
a distinguished Venetian was there who had knowledge of them, named
Sebastian Caboto, who knew how to make marine charts with his own
hands, and understood the art of navigation better than any one
else.... Caboto said: ... “My father died at the time when the news
came that the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, had discovered the coast
of the Indies, and it was much discussed at the court of King Henry
VII, who then reigned, saying that it was a thing more divine than
human to have found that way never before known to go to the east
where the spices grow. In this way, a great and heartfelt desire arose
in me to achieve some signal enterprise. Knowing by a study of the
sphere that if I should navigate to the west, I should find a shorter
route to the Indies, I quickly made known my thought to his Majesty
the King, who was well content, and fitted out two caravels for me
with everything needful. This was in 1496, in the commencement of the
summer. I began to navigate towards the west, expecting not to find
land until I came to Cathay, whence I could go on to the Indies. But
at the end of some days I discovered that the land trended northwards,
to my great disappointment; so I sailed along the coast to see if I
could find some point where the land turned, until I reached the
height of 56 degrees under our pole, but finding that the land turned
eastward, I despaired of finding an opening. I turned to the right to
examine again to the southward, always with the object of finding a
passage to the Indies, and I came to that part which is now called
Florida. Being in want of victuals, I was obliged to return thence to
England, where I found great popular tumults among the rebels, and a
war with Scotland. So that there was no chance of further navigation
to those parts being considered, and I therefore went to Spain to the
Catholic King and Queen Isabella, who, having heard what I had done,
took me into their service, and provided for me well, sending me on a
voyage of discovery to the coast of Brazil. I found a very wide river,
now called La Plata....”
(β) In the preface to the third volume, Ramusio gives the following note
on Sebastian Cabot. From Hakluyt’s translation.[60]
‘It is not yet thoroughly known whether the lands set in fiftie
degrees of latitude to the north be separated and divided by the sea
as islands, and whether by that way one may goe by sea unto the
country of Cathaia: as many yeeres past it was written unto me by
Sebastian Gabotto, our countrey man a Venetian, a man of great
experience, and very rare in the art of navigation and the knowledge
of cosmographie, who sayled along and beyond the land of New France at
the charges of King Henry the seventh, King of England: and hee
advertised mee that, having sailed a long time West and by North,
beyond those Ilands unto the latitude of 67 degrees and an halfe,
under the North pole, and at the 11 day of June, finding still the
open sea without any manner of impediment, he thought verily by that
way to have passed on still the way to Cathaia, which is in the East,
and would have done it if the mutinie of the ship master and the
mariners had not hindered him and made him returne homewards from that
place.’
André Thevet, _Les Singularités de la France Antarctique_, Antwerp,
1558. Thevet reproduces the outline of previous accounts, and adds that
Cabot landed three hundred men at some undefined place in the north, to
found a colony. They nearly all perished of cold:
‘Vray est qu’il mist bien trois cens hommes en terre, du coste
d’Irelande au Nort, ou le froid fist mourir presque toute sa
compagnie, encores que ce fust au moys de Juillet.’
Jean Ribault,[61] writing in 1562, mentions 1498 as the date of
Sebastian Cabot’s voyage.
Richard Eden, _Decades of the New World_, 1555, preface, leaf C 1.
‘But Cabot touched only in the north corner and most barbarous part
thereof, from whence he was repulsed with ice in the month of July.’
Antonio Galvano, _Discoveries of the World to 1550_, Lisbon, 1563.
Latest edition, Hakluyt Society, 1862. Hakluyt published this
translation in 1601.
‘In the yeere 1496 there was a Venetian in England called John Cabota
[the name is probably an interpolation of Hakluyt’s], who having
knowledge of such a new discoverie as this was, and perceiving by the
globe that the islands before spoken of stood about in the same
latitude with his countrey, and much neerer to England than to
Portugall or to the Castile, he acquainted King Henrie the seventh,
then King of England, with the same, wherewith the saide King was
greatly pleased, and furnished him out with two ships and three
hundred men: which departed and set saile in the spring of the yeare,
and they sailed westward til they came in sight of land, in 45 degrees
of latitude towards the north, and then went straight northwards till
they came into sixty degrees of latitude, where the day is 18 howers
long, and the night is very cleere and bright. There they found the
aire cold, and great islands of ice, but no ground in seventy, eighty
or hundred fathoms sounding, but found much ice, which alarmed them:
and so from thence, putting about, finding the land to turne eastward,
they trended along by it, discovering all the bay and river named
Deseado, to see if it passed on the other side; then they sailed back
again till they came to 38 degrees towards the equinoctial line, and
from thence returned into England. There be others which say that he
went as far as the Cape of Florida, which standeth in 25 degrees.’
Alonzo de Santa Cruz, _Islario General de todas las Islas del Mundo_, a
manuscript first printed by F. R. von Wieser, Innsbruck, 1908. Writing
to Charles V, Santa Cruz says:
‘This land was called Labrador because a labrador (ploughman or
landowner) from the Azores gave information and intelligence of it to
the King of England at the time he sent to explore it by Antonio
Gaboto the English pilot and the father of Sebastian Gaboto, your
Majesty’s present Pilot Major.’
Further on he speaks of the Baccalaos ‘first explored by the English
pilot Antonio Gaboto, by command of the King of England’.[62]
It will be seen that the principal detailed accounts are those of Peter
Martyr, Gomara, Ramusio, and Galvano.
Peter Martyr’s account was the earliest published (1516) and has the
best right to be considered as correctly reproducing Sebastian’s own
claims, since it was written by a man who was personally known to him
and who was in frequent friendly communication with him. Circumstances
of both time and place thus point to Martyr as the most trustworthy
witness of Sebastian Cabot’s statements during the first years of his
residence in Spain. As will be seen from the analysis given below,
practically all the important details common to more than one account
are found in his work, and it may be safely assumed that every serious
historian subsequent to him was acquainted with it, more especially as
it was written in Latin and thus accessible to all men of education.
Gomara, writing a few years after Sebastian Cabot had left Spain,
repeats the main features of Martyr’s account. He may have known
Sebastian personally, but does not expressly say so. His attitude is
critical and somewhat suspicious, and he shows that he is not a mere
blind reproducer of all he is told by his reduction of the northern
limit of the voyage claimed by Sebastian. It should be remarked that the
latitude of 58° N. is Gomara’s own figure and not Cabot’s, because this
has been advanced as proof that Cape Farewell in Greenland was the point
reached. There is no real evidence that Sebastian’s northward wanderings
took him far away from the Labrador coast; and the fact that in early
maps, including that of 1544, Greenland and Labrador are confused with
one another, or rather, represented as continuous, points the other way,
since, if Sebastian had crossed Davis Strait, he would have known that
they were distinct.
Ramusio’s two relations, (α) by the Mantuan gentleman, and (β) in the
preface to volume iii, are not of nearly such high value. In particular,
the Mantuan gentleman’s story is quite untrustworthy. It is a report by
Ramusio of a discourse delivered some years before he wrote it down, and
in which the narrator in his turn was speaking from memory after the
lapse of several years. Ramusio himself admits that his recollection is
confused on the matter, and the consequence is that he makes the Mantuan
gentleman put statements into the mouth of Sebastian Cabot with which
that individual would never have insulted the intelligence of his
hearers. The assertion that Queen Isabella, who died in 1504, helped
Sebastian to fit out the expedition with which he explored the River
Plate in 1526, does not encourage much trust in the remainder of the
account. Two of its implications also contradict one another. Cabot is
first made to say that he believed the new land to be Cathay, and
immediately afterwards he speaks of trying to find a passage through it,
because it trended northwards. But if it trended northwards it must also
have trended southwards if followed in the opposite direction, and,
assuming it to be Cathay, he had only to go that way to arrive at the
coast of India, his goal. Other obvious misstatements, as to the date of
John Cabot’s death, and the reasons for the abandonment of the
enterprise in England, which have caused so much damage to Sebastian’s
reputation for truthfulness, occur in this story. Considering the
third-hand and ‘hearsay’ character of the same, it is hardly fair to put
its inaccuracies down to his account. It evidently suffered by the
carelessness of one or both of the avenues by which it has been
preserved.
Ramusio’s statement in the preface to volume iii has a slightly better
life history, but here again he is quoting from memory, avowedly faulty,
of a letter written several years before, and apparently not preserved
by him. However, the details given are scanty, the only remarkable one
being that Sebastian Cabot could have made the north-west passage, but
was prevented by a mutiny. Such a plausible explanation of failure is
quite consistent with Sebastian’s character. On the whole, Ramusio
exhibits very little critical faculty, and has done Sebastian a great
disservice by reproducing such nonsense as the Mantuan gentleman’s
story.
The brief references in the manuscript of Alonzo de Santa Cruz
effectually clear up one point, namely, the suggestion that Sebastian
tried to deceive his contemporaries in Spain by claiming his father’s
exploits as his own. There could never have been much probability in
such a charge, in view of the number of persons who must have been
living during the period 1512–47 with personal recollections of all the
circumstances; and it is definitely and finally swept away by Santa
Cruz’s allusion, as a matter of common knowledge, to the explorations of
John Cabot.[63]
The remaining account of any length is that of Antonio Galvano,
published in 1563, but written before 1557, the date of his death. It is
not, on any serious point, at variance with Peter Martyr, but includes
some details peculiar to itself. Galvano was a man of grave and sober
character, and moreover, an experienced voyager. His judgement, in any
conflict of evidence, is more likely to be reliable than that of
Ramusio.
A correct view of the statements in all these accounts is best obtained
by summarizing them and placing the results side by side in the
following manner:
Points of Agreement:—
Two ships were employed (Martyr, Gomara, Ramusio α, Galvano).
Three hundred men were carried (Martyr, Gomara, Galvano).
The general direction of the voyage was to the north-west (Martyr,
Gomara, Ramusio α and β, Eden). Galvano says they went westwards to land
in 45°, and then northwards to 60°.
Ice was encountered in July (Martyr, Gomara, Eden). Ice without mention
of date (Galvano).
After making land, the expedition coasted northwards (Martyr, Gomara,
Ramusio α and β, Galvano).
It then turned back and sailed along the coast southwards and westwards
(Martyr, Gomara, Ramusio α, Galvano). Eden appears to deny this, but
probably unintentionally.
Extraordinary length of day was observed (Martyr, Gomara, Galvano).
A passage was being sought _through_ the new land to Cathay (Ramusio α
and β. The other accounts are not explicit on this point.
Points of difference:—
Highest north latitude attained: 58°, ‘he himself says much more’
(Gomara); 56° (Ramusio α); 67½° (Ramusio β); 60° (Galvano).
Lowest south latitude attained: ‘latitude of Gibraltar’, 36° (Martyr);
38° (Gomara); latitude of ‘Florida’—say 25–35° (Ramusio α); 38°, ‘others
say 25°’ (Galvano).
The ships were fitted out at Cabot’s own charges (Martyr); ships fitted
out at the king’s charges (Ramusio α and β, Galvano). Gomara uncertain.
A north-west passage was discovered (Ramusio β); further progress north
was impossible (Gomara, Ramusio α, Galvano).
Date of voyage: 1498 (Ribault); 1496 (Galvano); 1496 (Ramusio α).
Facts inconsistent with what is known with certainty of John Cabot’s
voyages:—
Sebastian Cabot was in command; two ships were employed; the voyage was
into Arctic seas primarily, and only turned southwards when further
progress north was impossible.
Statements obviously incorrect:—
Ferdinand and Isabella jointly dispatched Sebastian on the River Plate
voyage (Ramusio α);[64] date of John Cabot’s death (Ramusio α); date of
Sebastian Cabot’s voyage (Ramusio α and Galvano); the American coast
trends eastwards at 56° N. (Ramusio α).
In considering the accounts thus summarized, we are struck first by the
importance and the inter-corroborative nature of the points on which
unanimity is displayed, and secondly by the relative unimportance (so
far as concerns the general outline of the story) of the points of
difference. It is precisely on such points as latitude and date that
men, writing in good faith, would be liable to err from defect of
memory. The single serious discrepancy is the statement by Ramusio that
a northwest passage was found, while the other writers assert that it
was impossible to find such a passage. But Ramusio, as has been shown,
was not very careful as to his facts, and Sebastian Cabot may well have
been in a boasting mood when he wrote his letter to him. Sebastian was
undoubtedly prone to misstatements on minor points, such as the place of
his birth and his discoveries in the art of navigation, and in this
respect he was neither above nor below the general standard of morality
displayed by the adventurers of his time. With this exception, the above
analysis shows that Ramusio’s ‘Mantuan gentleman’ is responsible for
practically all the demonstrably impossible elements in the story. The
reasons for disregarding him have already been fully entered into.
The conclusion is thus inevitable that the extracts under consideration
present a report of a voyage that did actually take place, and that the
following were the principal details of it: Sebastian Cabot was the
commander; two ships were employed, with large crews; the general
direction was westwards and northwards from England; so much progress
was made into Arctic seas, by coasting northwards along the American
shore, that quantities of ice were encountered in the height of summer;
the object of the expedition was to find a passage through the American
continent to the land of Cathay beyond, and thence to the Indies in the
tropic latitudes; owing to ice, or mutiny, or both, further northern
progress had to be abandoned; and finally, Sebastian Cabot skirted the
whole coast of North America, from the neighbourhood of the Arctic
circle down to Delaware Bay, or even to the southern point of Florida,
and thence returned to England.
It is evident at a glance that this cannot possibly be a description of
John Cabot’s first voyage. Facts are known with absolute certainty
relating to that voyage which are quite incompatible with Sebastian’s
story.
On reference to the very meagre, but yet undoubted, details in existence
with regard to the 1498 voyage, it becomes equally evident that
Sebastian Cabot was not speaking of that either, when he furnished
material to the sixteenth-century historians. From first-class sources
it has been seen that John Cabot sailed in command in 1498; that he
conducted five ships; that he imagined the opposite shore to be that of
Cathay; that he intended to make his former landfall, and then sail to
the south-west, instead of to the north; and that his goal was the Isle
of Cipango in the tropic seas, and not a by-him-undreamed-of passage in
the Arctic.
Undoubtedly, then, Sebastian Cabot’s voyage was not identical with that
of 1497, or with that of 1498. It must have been subsequent to those
expeditions, since its commander was in possession of geographical
knowledge which can only have been gleaned by John Cabot in 1498. Two
considerations point to its having taken place in 1499 or 1500, with the
balance of probability in favour of the former year. On March 19, 1501,
Henry VII granted to a Bristol syndicate a new charter for western
exploration, in which it was distinctly laid down that no foreigner,
under colour of any former grant, should resort to the new-found lands
without the permission of the present patentees. This seems to preclude
with certainty the possibility of any Cabot voyage for several years to
come, for the new company continued its operations until 1505, and
possibly longer.
Another indication, from a Spanish source, points to 1499 as the
probable date. A Spanish adventurer, Alonzo de Hojeda, put to sea on a
voyage of discovery in May 1499. He explored the coast of Venezuela,
steering thence to Hispaniola, and returning to Spain in the spring of
1500. On June 8, 1501, he obtained from the Spanish sovereigns a patent
for a second voyage, empowering him to take ten ships and prosecute
further discoveries on certain conditions, among which appear the
following:[65]
‘That you go and follow that coast which you have discovered, which
extends east and west, as it appears, because it goes towards that
part where it has been reported that the English were making
discoveries; and that you set up marks with the arms of their
Majesties or with other signs that may be understood, such as may seem
good to you, so that it may be known that you have discovered that
land, in order that you may stop the discoveries of the English in
that direction....
‘Likewise their Majesties make gift to you, in the island of
Hispaniola, of six leagues of land ... for what you have accomplished
in discovery, and for the exclusion of the English from the coast of
the mainland, and the said six leagues of land shall be yours for
ever....’
Navarette, writing of Hojeda’s first voyage, says it is certain that the
explorer encountered some Englishmen near Coquibacoa on the coast of
Venezuela;[66] but he gives no authority for the statement, and such
authority has been searched for in vain. Possibly the patent quoted
above was the origin of his assertion. In any case the patent deserves
serious consideration, showing, as it does, that the Spanish Government
was genuinely alarmed at the progress of English exploration on the
mainland of America. If it is to be credited that Hojeda did encounter
an English expedition on his first voyage, that expedition must have
been Sebastian Cabot’s, as the dates do not allow of the possibility
that Hojeda ran across John Cabot in 1497 or 1498. If Hojeda met
Sebastian Cabot, it is most unlikely, in view of the latter’s accounts
of his voyage, that it was on the coast of Venezuela. The most probable
time and place of the intersection of the routes of the two explorers
was in the autumn of 1499 and in the vicinity of the island of
Hispaniola. Hojeda seems to have arrived at that place on September 5,
staying there for a considerable time before resuming his voyage; and it
is quite possible that Sebastian Cabot touched there on his homeward
passage from Florida, although he would naturally not mention the
circumstance in after days when in Spanish service.
But, however interesting these possibilities may be, there is not
sufficient proof for them to be regarded as facts, and their truth or
falsity does not affect the credit due to Sebastian Cabot for his
determination to turn his father’s disillusionment to account. A man of
good education, and of a subtle, reflective mind, he realized, as did
other cosmographers much earlier than is commonly supposed,[67] that the
new-found land was veritably a separate continent, and lay as an
obstacle between Europe and the coveted spices of the East. Hence his
voyage into the Arctic—the first voyage in search of the North-West
Passage, a quest which has formed an integral part of English history
almost to our own time, and of which the first act has been buried under
such an accumulation of misunderstanding and controversy as to pass
almost unrecognized. Whether the voyage took place in 1499 or later;
exactly how far north Sebastian reached; whether he actually entered
Hudson’s Strait; and whether he encountered Hojeda in the West Indies
after giving up the northern quest, are points which cannot be decided
with the evidence at present at disposal. Certain it is, however, that
his was the first attempt to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, an
achievement which Magellan was to accomplish by a different route twenty
years later.
Much has been made of Sebastian Cabot’s suppression of his father’s
discoveries. It cannot be denied that he showed a strange want of
generosity on the point, his first recorded reference to them being
found in the map of 1544. But the neglect to mention a fact which is
common knowledge is not so serious a fault as the withholding a secret
generally unknown. From the references to John Cabot made by Alonzo de
Santa Cruz, it would seem that Charles V was perfectly aware that John,
and not Sebastian, was the original discoverer, as indeed any one who
troubled to inquire into the matter could hardly fail to be when so many
contemporaries of the fact were still living. The wretchedly slipshod
and perfunctory methods of the sixteenth-century historians are
certainly as much to blame as Sebastian, who had a financial motive for
taking advantage of the confusion when he claimed, in his old age, the
gratitude of England for the services of his family.
That Sebastian Cabot was nothing but a charlatan and a ‘glib reciter of
other men’s tales’ is highly improbable. If he had been such, he would
surely have appropriated the 1497 and 1498 voyages to his own credit,
and would have made his story agree closely with all the undoubted
details of those exploits, with which he was necessarily familiar. If he
had really intended to represent himself as the sole discoverer of
America, what possible motive could he have had in arousing suspicion by
altering the number of ships from one or five, as the case might be, to
two; in maintaining the deception well knowing that his master, Charles
V, and many others were cognisant of it; and finally in giving his whole
case away and acknowledging himself a liar by publishing the inscription
on the map of 1544? His real fault was his egotistic silence on
achievements which were not his own, a fault which served his turn at
the time, but afterwards brought its own punishment by damaging his
reputation to an even greater extent than he deserved.
Most modern writers[68] have assumed that he claimed to have commanded
one or both of the first two voyages, and they have put forward, as an
explanation of the discrepancies, the suggestion that he named the
Arctic as the scene of his chief efforts in order to please his Spanish
masters. The latter were (on this hypothesis) bound to admit that
England had made some discoveries, but preferred to have them located in
a frigid and comparatively useless region rather than in more temperate
zones. The obvious and fatal objection to this reasoning is that
Sebastian, while asserting that he had been in the Arctic, also claimed
to have coasted down to Virginia or Florida during the very same voyage,
thus giving England just as good a title to those regions by right of
discovery as if his first landfall had been made there.
The conclusion is, therefore, that there were three distinct Cabot
voyages of which evidence has survived; the first two, under John Cabot,
made upon a false conception, and the third, under his son, upon a true
conception, of the nature of the newly discovered continent; and that
the search for the North-West Passage was begun by Sebastian Cabot.
-----
Footnote 57:
Hakluyt, vii. 150. All references to Hakluyt, unless otherwise stated,
are to the edition in twelve volumes printed by Messrs. Maclehose for
the Hakluyt Society in 1903. The above passage was taken by Hakluyt
from Richard Eden’s translation.
Footnote 58:
Hakluyt, vii. 153.
Footnote 59:
Hakluyt, vii. 147.
Footnote 60:
Hakluyt, vii. 149.
Footnote 61:
No French copy of Ribault’s work is known to exist. It was published
in English in 1563, with the title ‘The Whole and true discoverie of
Terra Florida’. Reprinted by Hakluyt in _Divers Voyages_ (Hakluyt
Society’s edition, 1850, pp. 91–115).
Footnote 62:
By ‘Antonio’ Cabot Santa Cruz evidently meant John, as the context
shows. His mistake in the name arose from his copying Ziegler’s
version of Peter Martyr. Jacobus Ziegler (Strasburg, 1532) reproduced
Martyr’s account of the northern voyage, attributing it to ‘Antonio’
Cabot. Apparently Ziegler did not know there were two Cabots.
Footnote 63:
The date of this manuscript is generally given as 1560, but, from
internal evidence, it must be earlier. F. R. von Wieser, in his
preface to the Innsbruck edition (1908), comes to the conclusion that
it was completed in 1541.
Footnote 64:
Isabella died in 1504 and Ferdinand in 1516. Cabot sailed for the
River Plate in 1526.
Footnote 65:
Navarette, _Coleccion de los Viajes_, Madrid, 1825–37; (original
patent printed in full).
Footnote 66:
Navarette, iii. 41: ‘Lo cierto es que Hojeda en su primer viaje halló
á ciertos ingleses por las immediaciones de Coquibacoa.’
Footnote 67:
On this point see Harrisse: _Discovery of North America_ (1892), pp.
102–24.
Footnote 68:
The principal modern works on the Cabots are: S. E. Dawson, _Voyages
of the Cabots_, 1894; H. Harrisse, _Jean et Sébastien Cabot_, 1882,
and _John and Sebastian Cabot_, 1896; G. E. Weare, _Cabot’s Discovery
of North America_, 1897; C. R. Beazley, _John and Sebastian Cabot_,
1898; G. P. Winship, _Cabot Bibliography_, 1900; H. P. Biggar,
_Voyages of the Cabots and Corte Reals_, 1903. Of these authors Mr.
Winship is the only one who takes the view that there were three
voyages, and he inclines to the belief that Sebastian’s voyage took
place in 1508–9.