1490-1496.) His Projected Voyage to Cathay.

31

months, and did not find the island; but, driven by tempests, they returned to a port on the coast of Ireland, for the repose of themselves and their mariners."* Of the later voyages, prior to 1497, we have no details. at all, nor is it anywhere recorded that John Cabot personally shared in them. But it is clear that he was their chief instigator; and it is also clear that, though no land was reached, the Bristol explorers, by no means discouraged, only applied themselves with greater zest each year to their noble undertaking.

A chief motive to perseverance was in the report of Columbus's discoveries, "whereof," as Sebastian Cabot is said to have remarked many years later, "was great talk in all the Court of King Henry VII., insomuch that all men, with great admiration, affirmed it to be a thing more divine than human, to sail by the west into the east, by a way that was never known before."† This general interest in the subject induced John Cabot to plan a more systematic voyage of discovery than had yet been attempted. On the 5th of March, 1496, he obtained letters patent from Henry VII., empowering him and his three sons, Lewis, Sanchez, and Sebastian, with their heirs and deputies, to sail to all countries and in all seas, east, west, or north, under the banner of England, with five ships of whatever size and strength they chose, for the discovery of islands, regions, and provinces of heathens and infidels hitherto unknown to Christendom in any

* Cited by LUCAS, Secularia (1862), p. 112.
HAKLUYT, vol. iii., p. 7.

part of the globe. This was to be done "at their own proper costs and charges;" but they were instructed to set up the English standard in all newly-found countries, and to subdue and possess them as lieutenants of the King. They were to have exclusive privileges of trade with the natives of these countries, and the King was to receive one-fifth of all their profits in return for the favours bestowed.*

This memorable expedition, second only in importance to that undertaken by Columbus four years and a half before, was not entered upon until the spring of 1497, and then it was in a more modest way than Henry's charter had sanctioned. In two stout ships, manned by three hundred of the ablest mariners that he could find, John Cabot and his sons-or, at any rate, his most famous son, Sebastian-sailed out of Bristol waters near the beginning of May. They went first to Iceland, whither Bristol merchants had been in the habit of sending ships for purposes of trade during the previous half-century or more. Sailing almost due west from Iceland, and apparently passing, without touching, the coast of Greenland, they reached the district now known as Labrador, but called by them and their successors New-found-land, on the 24th of June, 1497. It was at five o'clock in the morning that, from the prow of his ship, the Matthew, Cabot first saw the main land of America, just a year before Columbus, passing the West Indian islands, among which his two earlier voyages had been spent, first set eyes upon the

* RYMER, Fœdera, vol. xii. (1711), p. 595; HAKLUYT, vol. iii., p. 4.

London: Richara Bentley

1497.]

His New-Found-Lands.

33

continent. The precise spot at which Cabot landed is not known, but it must have been very near to the Straits of Bellisle, as on the same day he also discovered the island of Newfoundland, to which he gave the name of Saint John, in honour of the saint on whose day the discovery was made.

At this island, finding it apparently more inviting than the opposite shore, which he supposed to be part of another and larger island, Cabot waited for a little while. No counterpart to the tropical beauty and wealth of gold, and pearls, and precious stones, which rewarded Columbus and his comrades for their daring enterprise, was seen by Cabot and his hardy followers. Instead, they found a bleak and rocky country, on which very few trees appeared to them to grow, and of which white bears and antelopes seemed to be the chief inhabitants. Some groups of men and women they saw, all clothed alike in the skins of beasts, and with little other furniture than the bows and arrows, pikes, darts, wooden clubs, and slings which helped them in their frequent quarrels with one another. Black hawks, black partridges, and black eagles, as they reported, were all the birds that they could find; and the place would have seemed to them altogether inhospitable but for its wonderful supply of cod and other fish. The abundance of cod, indeed, caused the island of Saint John to be also often styled by Spaniards and Portuguese the island of Baccalaos.

That is all we know of Cabot's observations in the southern portion of the lands that he discovered. We

VOL. I.

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