IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // ^ ^^^ 1.0 I.I 1^ 12.2 L^|2.8 |50 ^ Its U I 14 2.0 1.8 1-25 II 1.4 1.6 < 6" ► V] <^ /2 ^ ^> /; '/ s Photographic Sdences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ^ ^<^% .^ K( meaning "CON- TINUED"), or the symbol V (meaning "END"). whichever applies. IVIaps, plates, charts, etc., may be t)im(E$d at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: 1 2 3 L'exemplaire filmi fut reproduit grAce d la gtnArosit* de: La bibliothdque des Archives publiques du Canada Les images suivantes ont M reprodultes avec le plus grand soin, comptn tenu de la condition et de la nettetA de l'exemplaire filmi, et en conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. 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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthode. 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 f c Ki: t THE CABOT CONTROVERSIES AND THE RIOrTT OF ENGLAND TO NORTH AM ERICA. 5 3^Y JU8TIX WTN80K.- iir NOKhD Copies, fuom thk Proc ,.:k,„xos of ti.,- MASSAcm;sETTs Histo.mcal Soc.etv, 1896. r CAMBRIDGE: 'fOIIN WILSON AND SON. 1896. C. 2. Oil the ri^ riiE CABOT CONTROVERSIES. VV^ITH our present knowledge of the adventures by sea of the Normans and Jiretons, or of the Biscayans and Basques, it cannot be i)roved tliat in the later years of the fifteenth cen- tury, any or all of them caught fish on the banks of Newfound- land, and so equalled on the American coast the hardihood of their known pursuit of whale, at that time, in the Icelandic seas. It needs only to be shown that these sea-going folks accomplished similar exploits in search of cod, to make it probable that before the days of John Cabot such people had become acquainted with the northeastern shores of America. We have no documentary evidence that the Bretons, for instance, were on the Newfoundland coast before 1504 ; but there is nothing improbable in the supposition that much earlier visits were made by courageous mariners. In those times as well as later, the Church enforced observance of a large number of days on which fish was the permitted food. On other days in winter a meat diet was little known among the common people. Seamen accordingly took great risks in distant seas to obtain fish for salting. There is a chance that some dated manuscript or chart may yet be discovered which shall establish the certainty of sucli Biscayan, or perhaps Norman visits, in the seventeenth cen- tury Spain actually rested her right to fish on these shores in the fre(iuenting of them by Basque fishermen before the Cabot discoveries, though it seems to have been near the midale of the sixteenth century before the Spaniards were again in any numbers in these waters.^ 1 Prowse's Newfoundlaiul, p. 42. In Peter Mfirtyr's account of the early English voyager., it is 5:aid that Cabot found the word Jiaccalaos used on this coast, or, at least, that is one interpretation of his I^atin. As this term was (^ne common on the Biscay an shores for stock- fish or cod, it night be deemed conclusive evidence of a previous acquaintance by the Hascjues with this coast, if Martyr's language would bear such an interpretation in the opinion of all scholars ; but it will not, though Harrisse seems to think that the expression was used by the natives of the coast, and not by t'^e common people of Biscay, which is tlie point in dispute. Judge Prowse thinks that the English began to fish on the coast in 1498, the Portuguese in 1501, and the French in 1504. Owing to the lack of explicit and published documentary evidence, events wjiich were later proved to mark two separate voyages of the Cabots were so confused in the minds of chroniclers, that tor more than three hundred years the voyage of discovery in 1497, followed up the next year by one for possible colonization, were reckoned as one, as has been unaccountably done in a recent '• History of the New World, called America,"' by E. J. Payne. The confusion was long ago disjiclled, \vhen Richard Biddle published his " Memoir of Sebastian Cabot" in 1881, and therein solved what was at that time the chief riddle of the ('abot story. The narrative of these voyages is, however, still left singularly studded with mooted points, and the controversy over them has served to keep alive our interest in the exploits of those English pioneers in American discovery. We are now to pass in review these further controverted questions. Charles Deane represents that John Cabot was born in Genoa, and was naturalized in Venice. This is the view of Harrisse, who goes critically into the evidence. Tarducci, who had elaborately discussed the point in the ^' Revista Storica italiana " in 1892, repeated his argument for Venice as the birthplace in his later book on the Cabots. BuUo, in a monograph, contends with little force for Chioggia. The opinions of Deane and Harrisse are the best sustained. The controversy over the date of the voyage of discovery yields more easily to demonstration, llakluyt, in his pre- liminary single volume, published in 1589, had cited one of the legends of the Cabot mappemonde (1544), which gave the dat had wit wri voyages, d on this itin. As 'or stock- tice of a coast, if 111 in the sse seems es of the which is ; English L501,aiid imentary separate ninds of e voyage one for las been r World, ;vas long ■ Memoir ,t was at larrative led with jrved to pioneers w these born in view of arducci, Revista enice as llo, in a The scovery lis pre- one of ave the date as 1404. On the strength of this, before the map itself had been brought to the notice of modern scholars, and not- withstanding Hakluyt later adopted the date 14l>7, other writers, like Harris and Pinkerton, had accepted the date of 1494, and it has been agreed to in our day by D'Avezac and T'lrducci. When Hakluyt, in 1000, made the change to 1497, some years after Lok in his map had given that »late, he set a fashion which became more prevalent ; and it was adopted by Biddle as die only possible date, in view of the fact that the royal license for iK, voyage was issued in March, 1495-6. In 1843 the discovery of the only copy of the Cabot map which has been found, and which is now in the Bibliothoque Nationale at Paris, showed that Hakluyt, in copying the legend in 1589, had done so correctly ; for the date 1494 was plainly given upon the map. R. H. Major, of the British Museum map department, endeavored to account for the date 1494 by supposing that in the printer's copy of the legends, the Roman figures VH had been read IHI, because the inclini.ig strokes of the V were not brought together at the bottom. Cumulative evidence, as well as that of the patent, has made it certain to the large majority of investiga- tors that 1497 is the exact date. A conclusive document in support of this date, as well as in proof of the unc^uostionable agency of the elder Cabot, as against his son's, in the discovery of that year, was found some years ago in the archives at Milan. It is a letter of Raimondo de Soncino, which was originally published in 1865, reprinted by Desimoni in 1881, and was first given in English by Deane in 1883, and later, in "lother version, by Prowse in 1895. The Cabot map gave the particular date as June 24. This has generally been accepted as correct ; but Harrisse has recently argued that it is an impossible date, inasmuch as ten or fourteen days more would have been necessary to reach the coast from the time of leaving England. The scene of the landfall is still in dispute, and is likely to remain so. There was no documentary evidence on the point, except inferentially, till 1843, when the Cabot map was dis- covered. It was then found that the expression Prinvi tierra vista was engraved across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, beginning at a point near the northern extremity of Cape Breton Island. 6 1 It was of couise a (iiit'stioii wluithcr this meant lliat the ishmd, as a wliolu, was tlio hind first seen, or tliat tliis particii- hir nortliern uai)e of the ishmd was intended. That it con- veyed tiiis hitter exactness ot" description is tiie opinion of Deanc, I^oiirinot, and otliers ; wliile S. E. Dawson, in a paper pnhlislied l»y the Uoyal Society of Canada, thinks that tiie ishmd as a wliole was intended, and tliat the true hmdfall was the projx'r ('a{)e Ih'eton, at tiie southeast corner of the island. W^ith this view lie contends for the small island, Scatari, lying seaward of that point, as the island of St. John discovered on "■ the same day." Those who favor the North Cape point to Prince Edward's Island as the attendant island. Dawson's view is in a measure sustained by the Portuguese Portolano, usually dated from 1514 to 15:^0. Prowse, in dismissing Daw- .son's argument, depends upon what is called the " liturgical test" of early explorations, during which navigators named landmarks after saints' days, the order of such days in the calendar heing held to determine their course and speed. He Hiids that this test as applied to Cosa's coast names, sup- posed to mark Cabot's progress, conllicts with Dawson's theory. The eastern coast of Newfoundland has been accepted as the landfall by Ilowley and others. Ilowley indicates the l)articular locality as being within the southeastern peninsula, or the old colony of Avalon, as granted later to Lord Haiti- more. Prowse, doubting the original character of the Cabot map, contends that there is no positive testimony as to the precise si)ot of the landfall, and thinks it may have been on the Labrador or Newfoundland outer coast, probably at Cape J^onavista on the latter, wliere John Mason, in his map of Newfoundland (IGIG ?), places the legend, '' Firs-'t found by Cabot." This map is reproduced from Vaughan's '' Golden Fleece " (16*25) in Winsor's "■ America," vol. viii., and in Prowse's Newfoundland, p. lOG. An early Italian sojourner in the southern parts of North America, Galvano, died in 1557, and left behind an account of the New World, which was later printed, and a translation of it has been published by the Hakluyt Society. In this he speaks of Cabot seeing land in latitude 45° north, which so closely conforms to the testimony of the Cabot map that Deane sus- pects Galvano to have known that cartographical record. 4 th T of till fro in co^ boi me Ca WIkmi liiddic wrote, there Wiis little (|iiestii)ii amoiiiL; seliohirs timt (Jal)()t's laiidfiill hud heoii inade on the liiihnidor eoast. Tills view seemed to he sii[)i)orte(l bv the re[)orted conversiitioii of Sehastian ('ahot, aud by the evidenee of Thome, and hy the ma[) of Juan de la Cosa, who hail Ids kiiowleclge prohahly from Kiiu'lish sourees. 'I'he ollieial Spanish maj) of Itihero in 1521) bears a le<;end that the '' Kn<^lish from iirisiol " dis- covered the Labrador eoast. Molineaux's map (lO'M)) also bore a Cabot legend on the sam(! shore, liiddle, i!i his argu- ment, was not compelled to confront the testimony of tin* Cabot map, for it had not then been found, liarrissi", who writes long after that develoj)ment, still eontcnds for tlu; Labrador theory, and shoves aside the (ividenee of th<' map. This he does in the belief that at this time (1544) France, through Cartier's exploration, was establishing claims about the St. Lawrence gulf to the [)r(!Judice of Lngland, and that Cabot, now in England, in order to rehabilitate the English counter claim, falsified the record, and inserted the inscription in a way to support the right of England to the territory adjacent to the gnlf. it is hardly safe to hold that either of these contestants has established his theory beyond dispute. In the short interval between the landfall and August, when the return voyage was completed, there was not time for any extended exploration, and (Cabot's course after sighting land has been equally in dispute. Some contend that he mad.; tlu; circuit of the gulf, and passed out by the straits of lielle Isle. At all events it has been asserted that, wherever he may have struck the land, Cabot practically pre-em[)ted for England the continent of North America, by virtue of having seen it at tlu; north before any one saw it at the south. This belief is better vouched for than any theory which has been developed, by Varnhagen originally, and later by Fiske and iJoyd Thacher, to rehabilitate the claim of Vespucius to priority. If Cabot did not strike the Labrador coast, but rather the Newfoundland or Cape Breton shores, it may be open to dond)t if he saw on his first voyage the mainland at all ; and Markham contends that he did not. That Cabot supposed he saw it, thinking it doubtless Asia, seems apparent from the language of the second patent under which the voyage of l498 was conducted. John (Jabot is credited in this instrument with having seen in his earlier voyages both " land (ind isle." It is a quibble to (lisputt! tlio (v\il)()t claim to priority on .iny tnchnical distinction hetweon tlio inainhmd uiid any adjacent island. VVliatover claim Kiif^land later pn^ssed for the poasesHion of North America rested ofi what John Cahot now saw in 141>7, when he took possession for the Eni^lish crown. Still, after tlie voyage of the next year was accomplished, England for many years, notwithstanding sundry voyages for trade and observation, made no attempt to follow up her rights by occupancy. It has been conjectured that this apathy was owing, in part at least, to tlie unwillingness of Wolsey, who was ambitious of the papal chair, to displease the Emperor Meanwhile, h )wever, English fishermen seem to have fre- ([uented the :5oast. I). W. Prowse, in his " History of New- foundland" ^181)5) has pointed out how the English cod fishery on the Newfoundland banks, following upon the Cabots' di^,coveries, influenced the growth of the maritime supremacy of England. "The Newfoundland fishery," said Ralegh, " was the mainstay and support of the western coun- ties," whence sprang the power that struck the Armada. Judge Prowse aims to show that this fishing-trade, up to 1G30, was the greatest business enterprise in America, with intimate connection at times with New England and Virginia, and that the fre(iuenting of Spanish fishermen on the coast practically ceased after the defeat of the Armada, Unfortunately, the fishery and trading voyages of the sixteenth century enter very little, or not at all, into the chronicles of discovery ; and .fudge Prowse, in fortifying his belief of the paramount authority of the English in the Newfoundland regions during the first half of that century, is obliged to depend on chance references in contemporary documents, or inferentially on customs long established when referred to in later papers. The act of the 33d year of Henry VHL, relative in part to fishing on the Newfoundland coast, is said to have been the first English Act of Parliament relative to the New World. After it came to be generally understood that the New World wa" a distinct continent, there grew up some jealousy in England of the success which other European people had had in colonization beyond the Atlantic. At this time Eden, a distinguished student of the new discoveries, began to exert some iufiuence on the maritime spirit of England. In 1553 he « pii cai 9 listiiiction isessiou of V ill 141>7, ■>till, after iglaiid for trade and rit^hts by atliy was Isey, who Kmporor have fre- of New- [jlisli cod ipon the maritime ery," said 3rn coun- i. Judge .630, was intimate and that actically Ltely, the [ry enter 317 ; and iramount s during 1 chance ially on ers. in part ve been he New he New jealousy )ple had e Eden, o exert 1553 he published a transhition from St'l)astian Miiiister, v Mcli he called '' A Treatise of tiie Newo India," and two ytars later (If)')')) h(! [)riiited a versiitii from I'etcjr Martyr, wiiicii h»' styled '' Decades of the Newe VVorlde." Tiiis account by Martyr, dated in 1510, is the earliest which wc have of the printed narratives of (Cabot's voyages, and Martyr doubtless obtained the details from Sebastian Cabot, who is if John J names 1 in the full ex- 1 of the it con- mpany, n " was many leak in )st cer- testi- le was ir)44 Sehas- ion of ^rtrait En Of- urned Inch ies of ed. IX of tain, cond 10 is abot than that which concerns his fathers nativity. Sebastian told Eden that he was born in iJristol, England, whither his father had come not long before. On the other hand, he assured Contarini tl t he was a native of Venice, — a statement now accepted by Deane, Tarducci, and most of the other authorities. The character of Sebastian Cabot may be held, from ihe contradictions already indicated, to be easily open to dispute. Biddle and some later biographers like Nichols of Bristol have given him something like heroic attributes. Iin[uirtial critics, possessed of the later developments of research, can but expose Sebastian's conflicting statements ; yet it is fair to remember that these diversities are not drawn from anything that lie has written, but from what others have reported him as saying. His shuffling conduct, when he tried to be false to his obligations, and sell maritime secrets to the Republic of Venice, may, perhaps, rest on sufficient evidence, since it is contained in a letter of Contarini, from the Milan Archives, and in the Calendars of the Venetian Archives (1551), as published by the English Government. Harrisse, particularly in his " Discovery of North America," and in his " John Cabot and Sebastian, his Son," denounces vSebastian Cabot as a liar and an intriguer ; but this critic is over anxious sometimes to impale his victim. Ifarrisse's antagonist, the Spaniard Duro, speaks of Sebastian's moral dishonesty. lie charges him like- wise with incapacity, and in scientific attainments and seaman- ship Harrisse is inclined to discredit him. It is difficult, however, to believe that administrative incompetency could have chanicterized very greatly a man who was sought, both by England and Spain, to take the management of their maritime affairs. That his mind was fertile in resources, and that he exercised in matters of detail a superior grasp, seems evident. As a student of phenomena, he was, if not the first, a leading agent to suspect that by observing the variation of the needle a law could be adduced for determining longitude ; and on his death-bed he talked of it as a secret of the sea- man's art. He naturally carried his expectations too far, since first glimpses of nature's laws are likely to incline the imaginative mind to excess of belief ; but the continued publi- cation to-day of magnetic charts, and the occasional use of them in navigation, show that Cabot's insight was clear. 12 i: I; His manuscript maps are lost ; but Harrisse records in his " Discovery of North America," and in his Enghsh book on " John Cabot," etc., various mentions of them by his con- temporaries. Ilis drafts were doubtless used by Juan de la Cosa in delineating the Asiatic coast in the map of 1500, now preserved in the Archives of the Marine at Madrid. This earliest delineation of the American regions was lost sight of till Humboldt drew attention to it, and nothing of an earlier date, showing the new world, has ever been found. The Spanisli Government has lately reproduced it in full size, and it has been engraved by Jomard and many others, particularly its American parts. There is good reason to believe that Cabot's charts were used for the regions of the northeast by Ruysch, who produced the earliest engraved map, showing the new dis- coveries, whichappeared in the Ptolemy of 1586, and has been reproduced by Winsor, Nordenskiold, Prowse, and many otliers. Prowse,^ who also despises Sebastian Cabot, thinks that in the poor estate of his old age he may have sold his maps to Spain, and that their disappearance may have been occasioned by the jealousy of Spain in keeping secret maps of the New World, — a habit charged upon the Spanish Hydro- graphical Office of that time, particularly by Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Harrisse seems inclined to doubt this habit in cases which tell against his theories, though he acknowledges that the Pilot Major was not in the early years permitted to sell maps, and shows how Sebastian Cabot, while in that office, pre- vented others from doing the same. The engraved map of 1544, usually cited as the Cabot mappemonde, and now pre- served in the only copy known, in the great library at Paris, has been photographed, full-size, for some of the principal Ameri- can historical libraries, and has been often reproduced on a smaller scale in the great fac-simile atlases and elsewhere. There is some reason to believe that other editions or issues of it may have been produced, since the date 1549 is assigned to it, in the citation of some of its legends made by Chy- tncus about 1505. These inscriptions are further enigmas ; for while Sebastian Cabot must necessarily have been the source from which some of the statements are drawn, there are parts of the legends which it is impossible to believe repres'jut sucli knowledge as he must 'be supposed to have 1 Newfoundland, p. 30. ha( 15' Th the its a \v| .j3 18 ; in his Dook on lis con- ,n de la 00, now 1. This sight of I earlier . The 3, and it ilarly its Cabot's Ruysch, lew dis- las been [ many , thinks 5old his ve been maps of Hydro- mphrey cases es that to sell ce, pre- map of w pre- ris, has Ameri- d on a where. issues signed Chy- gmas ; n the there elieve have had. Ortelius, the earliest maker of atlases, i)Ossessed, in 1570, a copy of the maj) ; but ho throws no light upon it. These legends are not all a part of the map itself, but most of thorn are printed on separate sheets of paper and pasted on its margin. They interlink with the body of the map in such a way, however, as to make it apparent that they belong to the publication. They are in Latin and Spanish, nearly matching. A manuscript copy of them in the hand of a learned Spaniard, Dr. Grajales, was found by Harrisse in the Royal Library at ^fadrid, and led that critic to think that Cabot may have furnished the data, and Grajales have worked up the text ; but there does not seem to be evidence that Grajales may not have copied them from another copy or from the printed sheets. The inscriptions were never in their com- pleteness laid before scholars in print, till they were copied for Dr. Deane from the map. After his death the text with an English translation, made under his direction, was printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, i:i February, 1891. Some of them are printed by Harrisse in his English book on Cabot. The same inscriptions from the original type, and printed in a brochure, turned up in 1895, for the first time, in an auction sale of the library of the Chateau de Lobris, in Silesia, and was brought to this coun- try for a dealer in New York. The brochure furnishes a title — " Declaratio Chartje Nov;e Navigatoria' Domini Almi- rantis" — not before known. The inscriptions veil the fact that there were separate voyages of discovery and of attempted colonization. The voyage of 1498, conducted under the license granted February 3, 1497-8, began in the following May and continued till the autumn or early winter. Our knowledge of its prog- ress depends unfortunately and largely on what Sebastian Cabot is reported to have said of his experiences in these yetvrs ; but we are forced to eliminate from his narrative what we must otherwise determine could only have belonged to events of the earlier voyage. We have, in addition, what is here and there recorded in various documentar}^ sources. These last authorities have been rendered accessible in what lias been collected in the works of Uiddlo, Harrisse, Deane, Tarducci, Pezzi, and Dcsimoni ; and in the calendars of the Venetian and Spanish documents, published by the Master of 14 the Rolls, in London. An enumeration of the documentary sources of the two Cabot voyages, as well as indications of the places wherein they can be found, constitute a "Syllabus" at the end of Harrisse's latest book on *■' John Cabot and Sebastian, his Son." There is another conflict of testimony as to the high lati- tude reached by Cabot on this second voyage. Some accounts say that it was 55', and others about (57 , but it is possible that the larger figures refer to a later voyage, yet to be mentioned as among the possibilities. On his southern course he is said to have gone down to 36-, or, as again expressed, to the latitude of Gibraltar. That Ojeda in 1501 was ordered by Spain to the Florida coast to plant symbols of the Spanish rights thereto, and to bar out the English, is thought to have been occasioned by English visitors to that region, who, in the opinion of some, must necessarily have been Cabot and his companions on this voyage of 1498. There are two incidents in Sebastian C^abot's career which have been thought to show that he could never have been so far south along this Atlantic coast. If he had, and had thereby established any rights for England, it is thought tiiat he would not have held his tongue in 1524, when he was at the Con- gress of Badajos and the claim of Spain to this coast was assumed. Again in 1535 he was present at the trial instituted by the Columbus heirs, and he there testified that he did not know there was a continuous coast from Baccalaos to Florida, which, with the experience assigned to him on this voyage, would have been perjur3^ Too much should not be made of these variances, however, since Sebastian Cabot at both these dates was a paid officer of Spain, and could hardly be expected to damage the interests of his Spanish masters or his own. That Sebastian Cabot made a later voyage to the north Atlantic coast is likewise a matter of dispute. Eden in his " Treatise of the Newe India*' ( 1553), while Cabot was living in England, mentions such a voyage as having occurred in 1516. Hakluyt later, referring to it, makes the voyage, how- ever, take a direction towards the West Indies. Biddle found its destination in the Arctic regions, and says that Cabot was accomi)anied by Pert, and that the two explorers reached the latitude of 67" 30' — which is the extreme r.'*^^itude of his northern exploration, as pi.-ofessed by Cabot himself to 1 vol Dq in eai soil a ,&■ cumentary ions of the Uiibus " at Jabot and high hiti- e accounts ssible that mentioned irse he is ^ed, to tlie I'dered by e Spanish it to have 'lio, in the )t and his eer which e been so id tliereby he would the Con- cjoast was instituted e did not Florida, voyage, made of oth these expected )\vn. le uortli n in his IS living urred in ge, hovv- le found ibot was hed the of his iself to I 15 Raninsio. Deane and Kohl are inclined to discredit the voyage altogether; but JJrevoort, in a communication to Doane, suspects it may have taken place, but in 1508, and not in 1510. llarrisse does not credit this voyage, nor the alleged earlier one of 1508, when Sebastian is said to have brought some native Americans to England. A new intelligence as regards the entire Cabot story was shed upon it in 1831, when Richard Biddle printed his " Memoir of Sebastian Cabot." It was he, as has been shown, who separated the details of the two voyages. IJe printed the license for a voyage of discovery in full for the first time. He offered the best exposition of these early maritime explorations which had l)een made up to that time. The lesser biograpliies of Hay ward (in Sparks' "American Biography") and of Nichols of Bristol, owe everything to Biddle. The chapter which Charles Deane gave to the subject in the third volume of the " Narrative and (^ritical History of America " constitutes a cautious and thorough examination of all the evidence, extended or brief, worthy of consideration ; and he surveys it in a chronological way. A study of Dr. Deane's treatment is peculiarly indicative of the hazards to which historical statements are subjected during transmission from one writer to another, under the influence of tradition, chance knowledge, inference, and conjecture. llarrisse's full knowledge, with an unconscious wavering from his often professed documentary standard, is shown in his "Jean et Sebastien Cabot" (1882), when he examines the attendant cartography and bibliography, and enriches his text with documentary proofs. He also arranges the chronology of later voyages down to the middle of the f^ixteenth ceui^ury. What he says of the Cabots in his " Discovery of North America" (1892) puts in English what he had before displayed in B\ench, and adds something in a supplemental way. He gave a later word in his " Subastien Cabot, Navigateur Vendtien," which was printed in the " Revue de Geographic," January, 1895. He rearranged and amplified all the discus- sions on mooted points, and cited the evidences thereupon with much skill in his "John Cabot, the Difi^coverer of North America, and Sebastian his Son " (London, 1890). Beside the little treatise of Cornelio Desimoni, the Italians have given us an extended survey in the work of Tarducci, IG published at Venice in 1802. In his trejitment he avails him- self of what his predecessors had done up to that time ; but he seems ignorant of the labors of Dr. Deaiie. An English trans- lation by H. F. Hrownson was published at Detroit in 1893, but the translator failed to rectify palpable errors of his original. Tarducci shows industry ; but his book has some glaring defects, and he stubbornly adheres to exploded theories. The lesser authorities who have aimed in what they have produced to i^eep abi-east of the progress of knowledge on the subject are the following : Kohl, in his '' Discovery of Maine " ; Coote, in the " Dictionary of National Biography " ; Bancroft, in the " Centennial "' and later edition of his " United States " ; Fiske, in his "Discovery of America"; Winsor, in his "Columbus"; Kingsford, hi his "History of Canada"; and Prowse, in his " History of Newfoundland." ■is c avails him- time ; but he iiglish trans- •oit in 1893, rrors of his k has some exploded fc they liave edge on the of Maine " ; ; Bancroft, id States " ; >r, in his itla"; and