graphed for Scribner's Magazine from the original in the Public Record Office, London. by keeping along a higher parallel of latitude, and consequently by a shorter route. In fact, Cabot's notion was that of a northwest passage. Accordingly, on May 2, 1497, he set sail in a vessel of about fifty tons, called the Matthew, manned by a crew of sixteen English sailors. On June 24th, at early morn, they sighted land. The exact point thus reached has been the subject of considerable dispute. Some authorities imagine Cabot's landfall to have been the coast of Labrador; others suggest Cape Breton; but the more probable conjecture, as well as an unbroken local tradition, points to Cape Bonavista, in Newfoundland, as the land first seen. The Matthew re-entered the port of Bristol on August 6, 1497, after an absence of a little more than three months. Of what happened during the passage out and home, we have no record. On his return, Cabot seems to have had a very good reception at the hands of his adopted fellow-countrymen. Pasqualigo, a Venetian in London, writing to his brother in Venice, says: "The English run after him like mad. His name is Zuan Cabot, and they call him the great Admiral." But the most we learn of the matter is in a letter from Raimondo do Soncino, dated London, December 18, 1497, addressed to the Duke of Milan: "The King," he says, "has gained a great part of Asia without a stroke of the sword. In this kingdom is a popular Venetian called Zoanne Caboto, a man of considerable ability, most skilful in navigation, who, having seen the most serene kings, first him of Portugal, then him of Spain, that they had occupied unknown islands, thought to make a similar acquisition for His Majesty (Henry VII.). And having obtained the royal privileges which gave him the use of the land found by him, provided the right of possession was reserved to the Crown, he departed in a little ship from Bristol with eighteen. persons, who placed their fortunes with him. Passing Ibernia (Ireland) more to the west, and then ascending toward the north, he began to navigate the eastern part of the ocean, leaving for some days the north to the right hand, and having wandered enough, he came at last to firm land, where he planted the royal banners, took possession for His Highness, made certain marks, and returned. "The said Messer Zoanne, as he is a foreigner and poor, would not be believed if his partners who are all Englishmen, and from Bristol, did not testify to the truth of what he tells. This Messer Zoanne has the description of the world in a chart, and also in a solid globe, which he has made, and he shows where he landed; and that going toward the east he passed considerably beyond the country of the Tanais. The sea is full of fish, which are taken not only with the net but also with a basket in which a stone is put so that the basket may plunge into water. And the Englishmen, his partners, say that they can bring so many fish that the kingdom will have no more business with Islanda (Iceland), and that from this country there will be a very great trade in the fish they call stock-fish. "They say, now they know where to go, the voyage will not take more than fifteen days if fortune favors them after leaving Ibernia. The Admiral, as Messer Zoanne Petition of John Cabot and his Sons to Henry VII., with the Letters Patent, March 5, 1496. (Photographed for Scribner's Magazine from the original in the Public Record Office, London.) is already styled, has given his companion, a Burgundian, an island, and has also given another to his barber, a Genoese, and they regard themselves as counts, and my Lord the Admiral as a prince. And I believe that some poor Italian friars will go on the voyage, who have the promise of being bishops. And I, being a friend of the Admiral, if I wished to go, could have an archbishopric." The King assigned to Cabot a pension of £20 per annum, and there is an entry of another 10 given him as a donation, but it is hoped that this modest sum was for the sailor who first sighted land. Henry the Seventh, however, was a penurious monarch, and in his eyes the above honorarium may have seemed sufficient. In any event, he granted Cabot a second patent, dated February 3, 1498, which authorized him to lay his hand upon any six ships, if not more than two hundred tons, in any part of the realm, "and them convey and lead to the land and isles of the late found by the said John, in our name and by our commandment." Before the expedition was ready John Cabot died, leaving the new adventure to be prosecuted by his son. Sebastian Cabot, who started from Bristol in May, 1498, with a fleet of five vessels, seems to have first sailed in a northwesterly direction, and probably found his way into Hudson's Bay; but the ice was too much for him, or at all events for his crews, for they became mutinous, and compelled him to bear up. On this he returned to Baccalaos, * in Newfoundland, to refit, and subsequently cruised along the American coast as far as Virginia in A corruption of a Basque word meaning "dried cod." Warrant of Henry VII., December 13, 1497, Granting a Pension of £20 to John Cabot. 38° north latitude, having explored thirteen hundred miles of the American seaboard. Sebastian's further fortunes may be briefly summarized. In 1512 he is found at Seville engaged in revising the Spanish king's maps and charts. After the death of Ferdinand he returned to England, but in 1518 he again went to Spain, and in 1524 he took part in the famous conference summoned at Badajos, under the auspices of Charles the Fifth, to determine whether the Moluccas belonged to Spain or to Portugal. The question arose out of the original treaty, dated 1494, between Ferdinand of Spain and John of Portugal, under which, with the sanction of the Pope, it was agreed that whatever lay to the east of a meridian drawn through a point three hundred and seventy leagues to the west of the Cape Verd Islands should belong to Portugal, and everything to the west of that meridian to Spain. As this arrangement applied to both hemispheres of the globe, it resulted in giving Brazil to Portugal, and in the Moluccas being adjudged to Spain, though the Portuguese retained possession of them till ousted out by the Dutch. In 1526 Sebastian Cabot set out on a still more im portant expedition, whose object was the exploration of the Pacific Ocean; but, owing to the disaffection of his subordinates, this intention was frustrated, and Cabot put into La Plata. He sailed up that river three hundred and fifty leagues, built a fort at one of the mouths of the Paraná, which stream he ascended in boats, and also penetrated some distance up the Paraguay. His attempts to found a colony not proving successful, on account of quarrels with the natives, which in some measure owed their origin to an indigenous chief having fallen in love with the wife of one of his officers, Sebastian threw up the enterprise, and, returning to England, made his permanent home among us. In 1549 Edward the Sixth granted him a pension of 250 marks, and gave him the title of Grand Pilot. During the next few years he was occupied in promoting trading expeditions to Russia, and as a consequence became Governor of the Muscovy Company. Sebastian Cabot is supposed to have died in London in 1557, being then about eighty years old. From what has been stated it is evident that the Cabots may be justly called the discoverers of the North American continent. Columbus, unluckily for the per fect accomplishment of his original idea, had been waylaid by the West Indian Islands, and entangled in the network of the Antilles. An impression prevails that he never reached any part of the American terra firma, but this is a mistake, for he not only anchored and landed in various harbors on the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, but he also entered the Gulf of Paria, and observing the tremendous flow of fresh water which poured through it, rightly concluded that he must be in the neighborhood of such a river as only a big continent could account for. But, even if he had never got beyond Cuba, or Hispaniola, it is to Columbus, and to Columbus alone, that must be assigned the glory of having led the way to the New World. It is in vain that his critics have tried to minimize his credit-the universal verdict of mankind has long since made his fame immortal. Yet it is neither to Columbus nor to Cabot, whose repute as an original discoverer erer of "Terra Firma." As a matter of fact the Brazils had been already reached and formally taken possession of by two other navigators—in 1 500 by Vicente Yañez Pinzon, for Spain, and in the same year by Pedro Alvarez Cabral, on the part of Portugal, though it is but fair to add that these circumstances were unknown to Vespucci and his associates. In 1503 Vespucci embarked on a further voyage, again under the auspices of Portugal, in a caravel which formed part of a squadron of six vessels under the command of Gonzalo Coelho. Vespucci's ship reached the Brazils in safety, in company with one consort, but the commander of the squadron and the other four ships were never heard of again. Shortly after his return from this last cruise Vespucci wrote a letter, dated from Lisbon, September 4, 1504, containing a summary account of all his voyages, to René, Duke of Lorraine. In this narrative Vespucci, in addition to the expeditions above referred to, states that he had made a voyage to Paria, that is to say, to Terra Firma, in 1497, three years before Columbus arrived there. This statement must either have been an invention of Vespucci's to serve some particular purpose, or a spurious interpolation introduced into his original manuscript. The reasons for considering the account of this particular voyage of Vespucci's to be false are set forth in Washington Irving's admirable "Life of Columbus.” must be reckoned only second to that of Columbus, that the honor of giving his name to the American continent has fallen. By a ludicrous perversity of fortune, not only one, but both the great continents of North and South America have been called after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian, who occupied a subordinate position in some of the later expeditions. Vespucci was born in Florence in 1451, and apparently was employed by the Medici family as their commercial agent in Spain. In 1496 we hear of him acting as factor for the house of Juanoto Berardi, a rich Florentine merchant, who had contracted to furnish the Spanish sovereign with armaments for the service of the newly discovered countries. In this way he made acquaintance with Columbus, who, in his letters to his son, speaks of him in friendly terms. In 1499 a little fleet of four vessels sailed for Paria under the command of Alonzo de Ojeda, and Amerigo Vespucci accompanied him. On returning, in 1500, Vespucci wrote, on July 18th, an account of this voyage to Lorenzo de Pier Francisco de Medici, of Florence. In this communication he suppresses the names of his admiral and of the other persons concerned in the enterprise, and allows it to be understood that he had been in independent command of two caravels, which probably were vessels commissioned by the house of Berardi. In 1501 Vespucci, having quitted Spain, takes service with Emanuel, King of Portugal, and sails to the coast of Brazil. Of this voyage he However much we may deplore the also gives an account in a second letter to cuckoo-like accident by which Vespucci behis former correspondent. Neither of these came godfather to the two Americas, Vesletters saw the light until the middle of the pucci himself must not be held responsible last century. But in 1504 Vespucci wrote for the usurpation. The unconscious crima third letter to the same Lorenzo de Med-inal was a certain Martin Waldseemüller, of ici. This was the first of his narratives that Fribourg, an eminent cosmographer patappeared in print. It was published in ronized by René, Duke of Lorraine. Latin, at Strasburg, in 1505, under the Duke probably showed Vespucci's letter to title of "Americus Vesputius de Orbe Ant- his geographical friend, who incorporated arcticâ per Regem Portugalliæ pridem in- its contents with the treatises which he was venta." A second edition of the document issuing under the assumed name of "Hywas printed in Vicenza in 1507, and it was lacomylas," and, as these publications had reprinted in Italian at Milan, in 1508. This a wide circulation, the use of the name third letter, however, relates not to his first America thus became propagated throughSpanish voyage in company with Ojeda to out the world. the Gulf of Paria, but to the second voyage, under the auspices of the King of Portugal, to the coast of Brazil, and it was on account of this voyage to the Brazils that Amerigo Vespucci was first considered the discov VOL. XXII.—8 The It now only remains for us to consider the practical consequences of John Cabot's discoveries. At the commencement of this article it has been suggested that they have been more important in their ultimate re |