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Sebastian Cabot 
 —John Cabc)t 
 
 o 
 
 Endeavored by Henry Stevens g m b etc 
 
 Corresponding member of the American Oriental 
 
 Society and of the New England Historic 
 
 Genecdw^ical Society etc 
 
 li 
 
 Boston: Office of the Daily Advertiser 
 
 LONUOJf : Office of the Author 4 Trafalgar Square 
 
 March 1870 
 
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 ^S^^jmU't-n^smata 
 
 ' * I WlWlH li lll> iiii n,i iii ni l >,m i ^ i iiiM»j i., 
 
Entered nccorrlinj? to Aot of Congress in the year ll^'O by 
 
 IIknkv S'JEVENS in the Clerks OtRee of the 
 
 Dist/ict Court of the District of 
 
 Massachusetts 
 
 "^ 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 
 lllifiram»«lBiirWiri^iWiiaii 
 
 tlii ii iiS « llii»a .ii» uteA t 
 
To 
 
 D H U N I E 
 
 I 
 
 a 
 
 W^tJ^ 
 
 i ijb m miiim 
 
 W: 
 
■■ 
 
 I 
 
 Truth crushed ti) earth shall rise again, 
 Till" eternal years of God are hers, 
 
 JBut Error wounded writhes with pain 
 And dies among his worshipers. 
 
 Bryant. 
 
 8 
 
 1 1 
 
 n 
 
 ■i i- 
 
 %\ 
 
•"m 
 
 The Cabots 
 
 ii 
 
 i- 
 
 N THESE DATS WHEN ELECTROPLATE 
 
 and Show invade and pervade our sanc- 
 tums, banishinjjj many of our sterlins: 
 national and family treasures bearing 
 the hall-mark of truth and reality to our jiarrets 
 or to the vaults of our bankers^ it becomes us 
 from time to time to lookout and overhaul our 
 household gods, to inspect iheir condition, that we 
 May transmit them to our children unimpaired. 
 Keep the golden candlesticks of your households 
 polished,and permit neither your Bible, your mor- 
 ality, nor your historv to become tarnished by 
 
 I 
 
 '•saaswKBsew**®! 
 
:. *p«w«!i«^ ., 
 
 neglect or disuse, was the pateraal advice of the 
 Old Translators, advice which comes home to out 
 business and bosoms with peculiar force to-day. 
 
 The Fifth of March has already, for the 
 hundredth time, reminded us of our national 
 origin and our progress. Soon the hundredth 
 Fourth of July will be here, and ere long the 
 four-hundreth anniversary of the birth of our 
 Continent. In the whirl and turmoil of the pres- 
 ent, are we sufficiently mindful of the past, that, 
 as these red-letter days come round, we may, at 
 short sight, be ready to exhibit to the world, giv- 
 ing an account of our stewardship, our historical 
 penates and heirlooms untarnished and pure? 
 
 Indulging in this burnishing mood, suggested by 
 our calendar of events, and resolvintT well for the 
 future, but hardly knowing where to begin, we 
 found on our table a little volume bearing this 
 title: The Remarkable Life, Adventures and 
 Discoveries of Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, the 
 Founder of Great Britain's Maritime Power; 
 Dlscovertir of America, and its first Colonizer. 
 By J. F. Nicholls, Citrf Librarian, Bristol. 20opp. 
 Cap ito, London, Sainpson Low & Co., 18G9. 
 
 
 -'^' J!**4 S-^Sm 
 
ti 
 
 We confess that wc cut the leaves of this 
 beautiful book, from the Cliiswlck Press of 
 \Vhittin«ham, with an eagerness that has seldom 
 been ours. Wc read it throufih, and throu;;h, and 
 thronsh, and closed it witli a profound disappoint- 
 ment which had never before been ours. We inter- 
 leaved it dclic:itcly with our historic litmus-paper 
 and endeavored to test its facts and inferences bv 
 the new li{2;hts and the new readinjjrs developed 
 by the active reseat ch of our aftc. We had lonj? 
 hoped some dny to find time with reverent hanJs 
 to mouse round in old Bristol and discover some 
 lony; hidden documents that mi;:;ht throw li^ht 
 on the honored family of the Cabots. Mr Nich- 
 olls, as a thorouL;h-2;oinij antiquary, well versed 
 in the eravc-stone, cuddy-hole and garret lore 
 of his city, has dispelled that hope. 
 
 We know nothing of Mr Nicholls personally, 
 but his book shows him to be an earnest, pains- 
 taking bio2:rapher, as honest in his convictions 
 and statements as an overwhelmin^r partiality for 
 a pet subiect renders it possible for him to be He 
 has studied so lovingly and so persistently that he 
 has Cabotizcd all his surroundin;;s. Not having 
 
 --■""SSSw^^? 
 
8 
 
 found at Bristol any thing unknown before, prop 
 crly pcrtainini? to the Cabots, and bcinp; no more 
 successful elsewhere in Enjiland, he has been 
 compelled to rehash the excellent but illdijrcsted 
 work of our countryman Biddlc with the works of 
 Tytler and Humboldt, seasoning the dish with the 
 recent discoveries of Mr Rawdon Brown in Ven- 
 ice and Mr Bergenroth in Spain, flavoring the 
 whole with a portrait of Sebastian Caoot ex- 
 quisitely engraved by Rawle, and an extract 
 from "Sebastian Cabot's map" of 1544, now pre- 
 scnx'd in the Imperial library at Paris. 
 
 Mr Nicholls as a painstaking chronicler, has 
 used, it must be admitted, all the materials that 
 the active research of many geographers and 
 antiquaries has turned up in the present century. 
 Nothing old or new, bearing directly on the Ca- 
 bots, seems to have escaped him, not even the 
 latest disquisitions of Mr Bancroft, Dr Kohl or 
 M. d'Avezac. The result is the above remark- 
 aole title-page to a more reniarkable book of 
 which the following remarkable passages are the 
 substance of his conclusions:-- 
 
 ^\f 
 
 
 I If 
 
 
 
"And Sebastian Cabot win henceforlh have a Uomo In 
 erery English heart, as well as In that of the great nation 
 who dwell In the land which he first discovered, and 
 which ought at this day, Instead of America, to be 
 called Cabotla." [Pagex.j "The date of his dcath,llke that 
 of his birth. Is unknown.... Even where his ashes lie Is a 
 ixjysterv; and he who gave to England a contlnent.and to 
 Spain an empire, lies in some unknown tomb." Page 187 
 "This man, who surveyed and depicted three thousand 
 miles ot a coast which he had discovered ; who «ave to 
 Britain, not only the continent, but the untold riches of 
 the deep, in the fisheries of Newfoundland, and the whale 
 flshcy of the Arct!c sea ; who broke up a monopoly that, 
 vamplre-like, was sucking out England's infant strength, 
 and unlocked for her the treasures of the world, paying. 
 'Go, vrln and then wear them ;' who is never reported to 
 have struck an aggressive blow ; who made enemies into 
 friends, and whose friends were ever warmly attached to 
 him : who, by his uprightness and fair dealing, raised 
 England's name high among the nations, placed her 
 credit on a solid foundation, an(? r^ade her citizens re- 
 spected ; who was the father of free trade, and gave ua 
 the carrying trade of the world ; this man has not a statue 
 in the city fBristoij that gave him birth, or in the metrop 
 olisof the country he so greatly enriched, or a name on 
 the land he discovered. Emphatically, the most scientific 
 seaman of his own or, perhaps, many subsequent ages- 
 one of the greatest, bravest, b. ' of men— his actions have 
 been misrepresented, hia disc veries denied, his deeds 
 
 h 
 
10 
 
 ascribed to others, and calumny has flung its fllth on his 
 meTuory." [Pagel88.J "We have striven to clear away the 
 misrepresentations with which ignorance, pr-^judlce, and 
 
 malignity have overlaid his life and actions To us It has 
 
 been Indeod alabor of love ; for, iike some glorious f\ntiuue 
 in an acropolis of weeds, he g.ew in beauty as we lifted off, 
 one after an another, the aspersions which had been cast 
 upon him, until, as the last stain was removed, and our 
 loving work was done, ab ^A stood before us In the 
 majesty of his true uanhood, w<? were amazed that such 
 a man stiould have remained so little known, and our only 
 sorrow in connection with our worli was ibis— that the 
 taek of exhurjlng his reeutation bad not fallen into abler 
 and more efficient hands." i Page 189. J 
 
 Now, without attempting to become champions 
 of Historic Truth, being familiar with all the 
 materials specially bearing upon the Cabots 
 used in compiling this book, and acquainted 
 with much more of a general character which 
 ought to have been used by the loving compiler, 
 we cannot forbear any longer to record our earn- 
 est and loving protest, in behalf of the memory of 
 Christopher Columbus and John Cabot, against 
 such wholesale assumptions. We hesitate nc . to 
 declare that there is no warrant in the documents 
 used by Mr Nicholls to justify him in placing 
 Sebastian Cabot on (his pedestal. 
 
 f 
 
 i 
 
 »!««£••<«»« 
 
; 
 
 ii 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 f 
 
 h 
 
 Uiuil very recently it was not possible to elimi- 
 nate the exploits of Sebastian, the son, from the 
 story of John Cabot, the father. Peter Martyr, 
 Oviedo, Gomara, Ramusio, Eden and Ilakluyt, 
 all speak of them at times indiscriminately and 
 very confusedly. All their testimony is either 
 gossipy and loose, or recorded at second or even 
 third hand, long after date, r.ith a painful lack of 
 precision and chronology, evidence altogether 
 untrustworthy. This confusion has now been 
 made apparent by 'he contemporary documents 
 recently given to the world. The matter is now 
 partiallv, not wholly, cleared up,, leaving our 
 present knowledge of Sebastian Cabot very 
 slight, ev^en less than when he shone in his 
 father's plumes. 
 
 It is only by making his hero tell a positive 
 falsehood (see page 110) that Mr Nicholls makes 
 Sebastian Cabot an Englishman at all instead of 
 a Venetian, and in the face of the most valuable 
 contemporary papers he appropriates lienors to 
 the son which rightfully belong to the father, 
 John Cabot. The truth is that all these contem- 
 porary documents of 1497 and 1498 recently 
 
 »*j^-»^,; 
 
f 
 
 brought to light from the archives of Venice, 
 Simancas and Seville, by Mr Rawdon Brown 
 and Mr Beri^enroth, at the instigation of the 
 British government, refer only to John Cabot 
 and the voyage of 1497, merely alluding to the 
 larger expedition of 1498 as having gone forth, 
 John Cabot with it, but not yet returned. 
 Nothing whatever on contemporary authority at 
 present is known of the details or results of this 
 latter voyage, or of Sebastian Cabot's connection 
 with it. That he was in both voyages, though 
 verv young, there is little doubt, but in a subor- 
 dinate capacity. Ar- nothing more is beard of 
 John Cabot it is not unlikely that he died during 
 the voyp.ge of 1498, and so his sou took 
 command— but even this is not certain. 
 
 We have no distinct account of the second voy- 
 age of 1498, nor have we of any subsequent 
 voyage from England, of Sebastian Cabot. If he 
 made the voyages of 1502, or 1517, or 1527, or 
 the "many other voyages, which I now preter- 
 "mit," they "took none effect," and we have no 
 reliable accounts of them. Like the spurious 
 voyage of 1494, thev must have got into history 
 
 Y' 
 
 C> 
 
? 
 
 13 
 
 from typoorapliical errors (like 1494 from mcccc- 
 xcvii, II for a bad v,) misreadings of authoritif^, 
 or from illogical old gossips like Peter Martyr 
 of Anffleria and Butri^arius. 
 
 It is always dangerous, we know, to attempt 
 the proof of a negative from circumstantial 
 evidence, for any day new documents may turn 
 up to confront us and spoil our reasoning. But 
 our present lights, if hung with impartiality and 
 judgment, are sufficient to dissipate the fog that 
 has so long obscured the discoveries of the Ce- 
 bots. They are not to be used like the hand-Ian- 
 tern of Diogenes, but the student with painful la- 
 bor must light up and go over the wholo fiold of 
 history and geography of that day, and look into 
 the 'sea of darkness,' as the Atlantic was then 
 ca'ed, stand in their shoes, and see our sphere as 
 the Oabots saw it. 
 
 Bear in mind that our grand old globe then 
 stood bolt upright and independent, while the 
 sun, before Copernicus commanded it to stand 
 still, was good enough to revolve round it, the 
 land being much Jiore extensive than the water, 
 Europe and Asia coming round the north like a 
 
H 
 
 bi<r overcoat covei rng its back and shoulders, so 
 that the North Atlantic was his shirt front, 
 England being a button, and the Gulf of St 
 Lawrence, then supposed to be in Asia, the cor- 
 responding button-hole, while Africa and India 
 were the tails hanging down into the sea below 
 the equatorial waistband. No one then dreamed 
 of an Intervening new continent, or a Pacific slit 
 up the back. 
 
 Let us dismiss all our geographical knowledge 
 acquired since the year 1498, and then read the 
 following extracts of letters written from Lon- 
 don. The first is from Pasqaaligo to his brothers 
 in Venice, daied August 23, 1497 :— 
 
 '•The Venetian, onr countryman, who went with a ship 
 from Bristol In quest of new islands. Is returned and says 
 that seven hundred leagues hence he dlscoverec*. land, the 
 territoryof the Grand Cham. He coasted three hundred 
 
 leagues and landed; saw no human beings He was 
 
 three months on the voyage and on his return saw two is- 
 lands on his right hand, but would not land, time being 
 precious, and he was short of provisions.... The King of 
 England is much pleased with the intelligence. The King 
 has promised that In the spring [of 1498] our countryman 
 
 shall have ten ships," etc "He is now at Bristol 
 
 with his wife, who is also Venetian and with his sons; 
 
I 
 
 ' 
 
 % 
 
 his name Is Zuan Cabot, and he is styled the great a .- 
 iniral....The discoverer of these places planted on his 
 new found land a large cross, with one flaar of Ennland 
 and another of St Mark (Venice) by reason of his being 
 a Venetian." 
 
 The next day, August 24, 1497, Raimundus 
 
 in London wrote to lils government in Venice: — 
 
 "Also some months aeo his Majesty [Henry VII] sent 
 out a Venetian LJohn Cabot] who is a very good mariner 
 and has good skill in discovering netv^ islands, and he has re 
 turned safe, and has found two very large and fertile new 
 islands.... The next spring [14981 his Majesty means to 
 send him with 15 or 20 ships." 
 
 Don Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish ambassador 
 
 at the Court of Henry VII, wrote to Ferdinand 
 
 and Isabella on the 25th of Jul/, 1498, of John 
 
 Cabot, as follows: — 
 
 "I think that your Majesties have already heard that the 
 King of England has LthiR year] equipped a fleet in order 
 to discover certain islands and continents which he was 
 informed some people from Bristol, who manned a few 
 ships for the same purpose last year ri497], had tound. I 
 have seen the map which the discoverer has made, who 
 is another Genoise, like Columbus, and who has been in 
 Seville and in Lisbon, asking assistance for his discoveries. 
 The people of Bristol have, for tha last seven years, sent 
 out every year two, three or four light ships (Caraveias) 
 
 7^£i»^;K£^i^^tiiim^S '^»»ii^Si23in»i»isM!^I^I^Siiie@j^^^^t.'. 
 
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i6 
 
 insearjhofthe Idand of Brazil and the Seven Cities ac- 
 cording to the fancy of this Genolse. The King determln. 
 ed to send out cmore ships this year, 14981 because the 
 year before they brought certain news that they had 
 found land. His fleet consisted of Ave vessels, which 
 carried provisions for one year. It is said that one of 
 them. ...has returned to Ireland in great distress... The 
 Genoise [John Cabotj has continued his voyage. I have 
 seen on a chart the direction which they took, and the 
 distance they sailed, and I think that what they have 
 found, or What they are in search of, Is what your Ma- 
 lestles already pop less [being west of the line of Demarca- 
 tm]. Itisexpeotedthat they will be back In the month 
 of September." 
 
 These documents are perfectly authentic, and 
 the statements in the extracts are positive, ira- 
 portant and susrgestive. In the first place, they 
 speak only of John Cabot, and effectually dispose 
 of the pretence that the islands were discovered 
 on the 24th of June. 1494, as pertinaciously con- 
 tended by M. d'Avezac, and feebly argued by Mr 
 Nicholls, instead of 1497. 
 
 From the year 1491 or 1492, there was a 
 search by the people ot Bristol, in accordance 
 with the fancy of John Cabot, for the fabled 
 island of Brazil, supposed to lie somewhere west 
 
 # 
 
 W 
 
 I 
 
 h 
 
I 
 
 17 
 
 of the coast of Ireland, but there is no intimation 
 that they had found it, or that Cahot had gone 
 himself to look for it; but in 1497 this Genoise 
 did find land, for the first time. It was on the 
 island of Cape Breton, as we learn from other au- 
 thorities. The same 6 ay he saw the island of St 
 John, now Prince Edward's Island, and on his 
 return voyage, coasting 800 leagues, saw two 
 other islands, probably Anticosti and the north end 
 of Newfoundland, near the Straits of Belle Isle; 
 thence home, after an absence of threa months. 
 Nothing south of the Gulf of St Law- 
 rence could have been seen in this voyage, not 
 even the province of Maine. If he effected a 
 landing it was probably on the island of St 
 John. He did not land on the other two islands 
 seen on the right in his homeward passage. It is 
 not unlikely that the south side of Labrador may 
 have been seen; but it is very doubtful if John 
 Cabot or any one of his party touched the North 
 American main continent in. 1497, or before 
 Columbus landed in Scuth America, in Vene- 
 zuela, the 30th May, 1498, though this is a matter 
 of no consequence, as far as the priority of the dis- 
 
 n 
 
mmimm 
 
 i8 
 
 covery of America by Christopher Columbus 
 is concerned. 
 
 These extracts show that John Cabot was a fel- 
 low-countryman of Columbus, though by naturali- 
 zation in 1476 he became a Venetian ,and suggest a 
 plausible theory to account for his movements be- 
 tween the granting of his patent in March 1496, 
 and the sailing of his ship, the Mathew, in May 
 1497. Columbus returned from his second or 
 three years' voyage in June 1496, bringing his 
 master of charts, Juan de la Cosa, with him to 
 Seville. The Spanish ambassador writes that 
 Cabot has been in Seville, that is recently. This 
 may have been between March 1496 and April 
 1497, or between September 1497 and the early 
 spring of 1498. 
 
 In either case John Cabot might have seen both 
 Columbus and La Cosa in Seville. La Cosa's great 
 chart very accurately depicting the north side of 
 the Gulf of St Lawrence was finished in the year 
 1500, and bears every mark of authenticity, but 
 contains no evidence of discoveries south of the 
 Straits of Belle Isle after the yoyage of 1497, 
 
 I 
 
 A 
 
 mmmmmm 
 
 M^mmm-ji ' 
 
t9 
 
 either by the Cabots or the Cortereals. There is, 
 of course, great uncertainty in this reasoning:, 
 but at all events this important passage in the 
 ambassador's letter shows the early connection 
 of John Cabot with Spain if not with Columbus 
 and La Cosa. 
 
 If Sebastian Cab , therefore, as Mr NicholTs 
 claims 'surveyed and depicted three thousand 
 miles of a coast,* it must have been in the Gulf 
 of St Lawrence, or north of it, as a subordinate 
 to his father John Cabot, and not later than 
 149b. There is at present, as far as we know, no 
 authentic contemporary evidence known that 
 either John or Sebastian Cabot ever surveyed the 
 coast south of Nova Scotia. We have not over- 
 looked the statement of Peter Martyr or that of 
 Butrigarius, or the assertions of scores of other 
 later authorities based upon these two gossins, 
 the one writing wildly eighteen, and the other 
 more than forty, years after the events described. 
 
 In the fall of 1512, John Cabot in whose name 
 thepaient of 1496 and the supplemental license 
 of 1498 stood, being dead, Sebastian Cabot, it is 
 
 
so 
 
 well known, haying received no further encour- 
 agement from Henry VH or Henry VHI, was 
 residing in October in Seville, with a royal 
 commission as captain in his pocket, awaiting 
 orders there, in the service of the King of 
 Spain, where he remained for a great num- 
 ber of years, though perhaps visiting England 
 occasionally. Here he became the intimate 
 friend of Peter Martyr, one of the Council 
 of the Indies, and shortly after was ap- 
 pointed a member of that board himself. 
 A little later, rising in honors and salary, he be- 
 came in 1518 the pilot mt^jor of Spain, andin 
 152d was deputed as one of the twenty-four wise 
 men of Charles the Fifth, to preside over the 
 celebrated Geographical Congress of Badajos. 
 
 After the return of the Victoria in 1522 with the 
 glorious results of Magellan's unfortunate expe- 
 dition, maritime enterprise, public and private, 
 was greatly a-oused throughout Spain and Por- 
 tugal. Innumerable schemes for developing com- 
 merce with the Orient, and making further 
 discoveries and explorations, were pro- 
 posed to the Council of the Indies and 
 
 l\ 
 
»l 
 
 * 
 
 discussed. Every pilot, whether amateur or 
 practical, had his card of the ' hortest route to 
 the Indies. Of these schemes, no loss than six 
 were approved and adopted by the government 
 and promoted wholly or in part by the public 
 funds, viz: that of Cortes, of Loaysa, of Gomez, 
 of Ayllon, of Cabot himself, and of Saavedra, 
 besides many others of minor importance. 
 
 Now in the several official positions of Sebas- 
 tian Cabot in Spain, it was his duty to superintend 
 and watch over all the discoveries and explora- 
 tions of the Spanish navieators, to supply them 
 with instructions, charts and scientific instru- 
 ments, etc. 
 
 As councillor, as pilot major and president of 
 the geographers, and as a man of vast experience, 
 he was presumed to know all that had been dis- 
 covered by his contemporaries. Is it reasonable, 
 therefore, to suppose that if he had been down 
 the coast of Maine, Massachusetts and Virginia, 
 from Bacalaos, as his advocates claim, in 1497 or 
 1498, to latitude 30 degrees, or as some say to the 
 point of Florida, he would have yielded without a 
 
 
 I 0Mi^Jl»aKii:^-^'.^i^JJSBn-3>Sei^ii&^^SSf^-^^-'--'iS^^ 
 
22 
 
 word of protest his prior right to the discoveries 
 of Ponce de Leon in Florida in 1518, of Griialra, 
 Cortes and Garay, in the Gulf of Mexico, in 
 1518 20, of A jUon as far north as Cape Fear in 
 1520 and 1526, of Gomez up to Rhode Island in 
 1525, to say nothing of the voyages of Verazzano 
 for the French ? No writer pretends to deprive 
 these navigators of their rights as discoverers 
 and explorers, and no protest or contemporary 
 claim is forthcoming from Sebastian Cabot, who 
 was all the time in the field and well acquainted 
 with the affairs. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind that, while these 
 navigators were groping their way up the 
 coast of the present United States from Florida 
 towards Cape Malabar, or the south side of Cape 
 Cod, between 1518 and 1525, they supposed they 
 were exploring the coast of Eastern Asia, beyond 
 where Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville had 
 been, never suspecting an intervening continent, 
 so much out were they and all the scientific 
 world besides in their calculations of longitude. 
 La Cosa laid down the Asiatic line in 1500, con- 
 tinuing it from a little boyond the Ganges to 
 
 % 
 
wm 
 
 H 
 
 meet the parts discovered by John Cabot. La 
 Cosa positively limits, in a very definite manner, 
 the discoveries of the English to the Mar or Gulf 
 0/ St Lawrence. 
 
 The highly important Portuguese portolano 
 now preserved at Munich, and described by 
 Kuntzmann, made about 1514, one of the earliest 
 and honestest maps known, after adding the dis- 
 coveries of the Cortereals to those of the Cabots, 
 and of Ponce de Leon, leaves the whole space 
 
 from Nova Scotia to Charleston open, as being 
 entirely unknown. From all these circumstances 
 we are forced to the conclusion that the rights of 
 tbe English to the discoveries of John Cabot and 
 his family in 1497-98 were allowed to lapse, and 
 that Sebastian Cabot never saw the North Amer- 
 ican coast south of Nova Scotia. 
 
 In April, 1528, Sebastian Cabot, after long and 
 ample preparations at Seville, sailed for the 
 Moluccasvia the Straits of Magellan, with four 
 well equipped ships, for the purpose of reen- 
 forcing and assisting the expedition of Loaysa 
 vrhich had sailed nine months before by the same 
 
■■i 
 
 route, with the view first to succor the men left 
 there by Magellan's fleet, and then to establish 
 and protect in the Moluccas Spanish Commercial 
 Bureaus. Cabot's expedition was an utter failure, 
 chiefly from his practical incompetence and dis- 
 obedience of orders. Juan de Solis had been 
 down the coast of Brazil, and Cabot had con- 
 ceived a notion that by penetrating the great 
 river afterwards called Rio de la Plata he might 
 pass through to the Moluccas, and thus 
 avoid the Southern straits and shorten the 
 distance to the Spiceries. Accident and mutiny 
 had something, no doubt, to do with his change 
 of plan, but his ambition to find a new route 
 had more. 
 
 In this expedition Cabot penetrated far into 
 the interior of Paraguay', explor* i many larjje 
 rirars and fertile provinces, suffered many hard- 
 ships, lost most of his men and ships, and finally, 
 after more than five years of toil, hardship and 
 disappointment, returned to Spain, in 1531, with- 
 out any favorable results, to find that Charles the 
 Fifth, hard up for money, had pawned the Moluc- 
 cas to the King of Portugal, and was too happy 
 
 
 
to avoid any Inquiry into the failures of his six 
 great exploring expeditions. So Cabot resumed 
 his oflacia! duties and remained in office till 1548, 
 when he returned to England at the affep-obably 
 of seventy-two or seventy-six years. 
 
 Shortly after this he was made use of by cer- 
 tain merchants of London in getting up a trad- 
 ing company to Russia, and to seek a North- 
 eastern passage to China. But of these honor- 
 able enterprises very little has come down to us 
 of a character to lift him to the high position 
 claimed by Mr NichoUs. Documents may here- 
 after turnup justifying in a degree the high 
 encomiums of our author,but at present we know 
 of them not. Nor do we know of any one whose 
 'calumny has flung its filth on his memory.' On 
 the page of history if one find^ very little in favor of 
 Sebastian Cabot to raise him far above the level, 
 yet no one has found anything against him. 
 His record, so far as we know, is honorable, but 
 there is very little of it, and it seems to us idle at 
 this day by mere assertion to build up a reputa- 
 tion for him. 
 
26 
 
 1^ I 
 
 Sebastian Cabot died probably in 1558, but no 
 one at present knows precisely when or where, 
 and therefore it would be as diflacult to find a fit 
 place to erect a monument to him, as to find a 
 good p.nd sufficient reason for it. It is better far, 
 according to the old saw, that people should ask, 
 why hath not this man a monument? than, why 
 hath he one? We ask why should a statue be 
 erected to Sebastian Cabot? and why should the 
 new Continent be named Cabotia? 
 
 To all intents and purposes Christopher Colum- 
 bus was the discoverer of America, and is entitled 
 to that honorable distinction. The grand idea 
 of sailing west to find the east was his, and the 
 success was his; let the honor be his. For 
 eighteen years was he laboring to cipher out and 
 to carry out this theory, which was all his own. 
 
 Tired and worn out in Portugal, after ten years 
 he found his way into Spain in 1485. For 
 seven long years he danced attendance on the 
 Sp-^nish Court, with no fortune but his idea; 
 sometimes thread-bare and bare-footed, ever 
 pressing his suit, never flagging in his confidence, 
 
 ■iifir (iiiniii 
 
i 
 
 27 
 
 i 
 
 questioned and ridiculed by commissions of 
 geographers and scientific men, scorned by the 
 Church and its narrow-pated sciolists ; without 
 ever being able to penetrate the conservative 
 ignorance of the learned, the reverend and the 
 courtly, 01'^ as he compluined, to convince any 
 one man how it was possible to sail west and 
 reach the East. 
 
 To us, therefore, it seems but trifling with com- 
 mon sense and playing with wr ds for Mr 
 Nicholls to contend that Sebastian Cebot discov- 
 ered America, just as it does for Senhor Vamha- 
 gen to bestow the distinction of Discoverer upon 
 Amerigo Vespucci. In the year 1492, Columbus, 
 after having first made his landfall upon a small 
 island, explored the northeast coast of Cuba, 
 supposing it to pertain to Asia. Thence return- 
 ing eastward, he visited Hispsniola, taking it to 
 be the Zipangn of Marco Polo — the Japan of to- 
 day. In 1494, in his second voyage, he explored 
 almost the entire southern coast of Cuba, having 
 his Master of Charts, Juan de la Cosa, with him 
 to delineate his discoveries] and soon after cir- 
 cumnavigated his Zipangu, visiting Jamaica and 
 
■M«« 
 
 28 
 
 Other islands. In 1506, two years before Cuba 
 was found to be an island, Columbus d!.,d in the 
 belief that, by a weetem route, he had found the 
 land of the Grand Cham of China. Now at that 
 time, whatever portions of the globe did not per- 
 tain to Europe or Africa, belonged to Asia. He 
 placed his discoveries in Eastern Asia, giving 
 names only to certain islands in compliment to 
 hi.^ patrons, but was too just and modesUo 
 bestv-'w his own name on the ancient continent of 
 Asia, parts of which Alexander had conquered 
 and Aristotle described. By a circumstance per- 
 fectly fortuitous, after the death of Columbus, 
 and without the knowledge of Vespucci, in 1507, 
 by a little knot of eaiuest students, in a remote 
 mountain town of France, the beautiful name 
 America was suggested for the newly described 
 large island of Terra Santa Crusis, or Brazil. 
 This large country was nearly a thousand miles 
 from thfc regions first discovered by Columbus, 
 and another thousand from that other province 
 of Asia called Bacalaos, afterwards seen by John 
 Cabot. No one then suspected that all these 
 fields of discovery were parts of one grand conti- 
 
 K 
 
 it-. 
 
 I 
 
 V 
 

 29 
 
 nent, to become thereafter known as the New 
 Hemisphere. Of these names of distinct pro- 
 vinces, Cuba, Paria, Brazil, America and Baca- 
 laos, the chances cf one supplanting the rest 
 were as good as thosfi of another. But, as usual, 
 beauty triumphed. As subsequent explorations 
 connected the islands and developed the conti- 
 nent, the beautiful name America extended by 
 degrees ovCi the whole, by the same law of man- 
 ifest destiny which caused the easily pronounced 
 name of the little province of Apeica to sup- 
 plant that of ancient Libya. Within about a 
 century, the new hemisphere became North and 
 South America, the fourth grand division of the 
 globe. Cuba, therefore, discovered in 1492, is as 
 much a part of America as England is of Eiirope, 
 or Martha's Vineyard is of Massachusetts; and 
 hence Columbus is entitled to the designation of 
 Di8coverer,ju8tasmuchasif he had the same 
 year first put his foot upon Florida, Labrador or 
 Brazil. 
 
 Thus the ambitious monument which Mr 
 Nicholas has achieved for his hero with such 
 commendable zeal and love is chipped away by 
 
mm 
 
 ■m 
 
 ■I 
 
 30 
 
 the cold chisel of simple facts, leaving his book 
 without a hero and his hero without a record. 
 Sebastian Cabot, who has been cruelly dragged 
 into prominence within the last forty years by 
 over-zealous advocates, must now bow to the in- 
 exorable laws of historic truth and retire to 
 respectable mediocrity, unless some new old 
 documents may reinstate him, while his father 
 will assume his true position on the page of 
 history. 
 
 We are sorry for Mr Nicholls and dear old 
 mercantile Bristol to lose a pet hero like Sebas- 
 tian Cabot; but if with his manifestly earnest 
 and amiable qualities the author can transfer his 
 labor of love to John Cabot, elide a great deal of 
 irrelevant padding, correct innumerable authorial 
 and typographical errors, state his opinions in 
 something like logical sequence, with guesses 
 a little narrower and studies a little broader, with 
 more precision and less fine writing, with bigger 
 facts and smaller inferences, he may yet achieve 
 a Cabotia of some sort or other for Bristol, and 
 deposit in the British Museum a Life of John 
 Cabot that shall be a credit to himself, a valuable 
 
mm 
 
 4 
 
 ' 
 
 31 
 
 contribution to biographical literature, and an 
 honor to Bristol. Let him suppress his finely en- 
 graved map, because, of the sixty-five names 
 upon it, his copyist and engraver have managed 
 to misspell above forty, hopelessly disguising 
 some of them. This is a very serious matter, un- 
 necessarily complicating questions too obscure 
 already. 
 
 In a future edition Mr Nicholls might also 
 explain, in respect of the excellent line-en- 
 graved portrait, that what was true of it forty 
 years ago is not true now. The original portrait 
 (not by Holbein, as claimed, for it is now ascer- 
 tained that Hans died five years before Sebastian 
 Cabot returned to England from Spain) was 
 once in the possession of Charles Joseph Har- 
 ford, esq., but about forty years ago it passed 
 into the hands of our countryman, Mr Richard 
 Biddle, at a cost, it is understood, of £500, and 
 was brought to this country. A fine copy, full 
 size, was taken, and is now preserved in the 
 galiery of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
 the original having been destroyed some years 
 ago in the great fire of 1 litsburg. 
 
 KMMIWiMMiWM 
 
 mmmm 
 
3« 
 
 By just so many pegs as we lower the hero of 
 Mr Nicholls, a corresponding allowance must 
 be debited to Dr Kohl and M. d'Avezac against 
 their estimates of Sebastian Cabot in the recent 
 volume of the Maine Historical Society. America 
 in rearranging and setting up her penates, 
 maet never forget Sebastian Cabot or 
 be ungrateful for his services, but 
 let the niche assigned to him by 
 Truth and History be ap- 
 propriate to his merits, 
 and not derogatory 
 to the honor of 
 
 OTHBBB 
 
 BND 
 
 
 nvne^mmmtimutt 
 
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