4 SPITSBERGEN 



stimulus to maritime discovery, and many were the 

 projects for searching the seas for a new route to the 

 east. Of these the most important was that sub- 

 mitted to Henry VII by John Cabot, of Bristol. 

 Much has been written, on slender and confusing 

 evidence, as to the share in its success due to him and 

 to his son, the more famous Sebastian ; and, to be brief, 

 we cannot do better than follow Anderson, who, in his 

 Origin of Commerce, ingeniously evades the difficulty 

 by speaking, commercially, of " Cabot and Sons." 

 The Bristol firm, then, in 1497 despatched their ship 

 Matthew to the westward and discovered and took 

 possession of Labrador and the islands and peninsulas in 

 the mouth of the St. Lawrence, the district being at first 

 known as the New Found Land, a name afterwards 

 restricted to the largest island. And they had their 

 reward, as shown in the Privy Purse accounts of 

 Henry VII, where an entry of the 10th August, 1497, 

 appears " To hym that found the new isle, 10." 

 Surely not an excessive honorarium for the finding of 

 a continent. 



In 1498 another voyage of the same ship by way of 

 Iceland, in which some attempt seems to have been 

 made to colonise the newly discovered territories, re- 

 sulted in the discovery of Hudson Strait and a visit to 

 Labrador, judging by the finding of the deer in herds, 

 the white bears, and the Eskimos who are not known 

 to have ever crossed into the island of Newfoundland. 

 This was not the only English vessel to appear in 

 these parts at that time, for in the same year the Privy 

 Purse accounts record a gift of 30 to Thomas Bradley 

 and Launcelot Thirkill for going to the New Isle, 



