IN NORTHERN MISTS 



important part. Nor is a word said about him in a single one 

 of the letters from contemporary foreign ambassadors in 

 London, and in Pasqualigo's letter of August 23, 1497, we 

 are told of John Cabot after his return that " in the meantime 

 [i.e., until his next voyage] he is staying with his Venetian 

 wife and his sons in Bristol." This does not seem to show 

 that any of the sons had been with him; and the protest 

 of the Wardens of the Drapers' Company of London (see later) 

 against Sebastian as a navigator points in the same direction. 



Not a line have we from Cabot's own hand either about 

 this important voyage of 1497, or any other. We hear that 

 he made maps of his discoveries; but these, too, have been 

 lost, like so many other maps that must have been drawn 

 during this period before 1500.^ We can, therefore, only draw 

 our conclusions from the statements of others, some contem- 

 porary and some later. 



The most important documents giving trustworthy in- 

 formation about John Cabot's voyage in 1497 are the 

 following : 



(i) The three letters from his two compatriots in London: 

 one from the Venetian, Lorenzo Pasqualigo, to his two brothers 

 in Venice, dated August 23 (September i, N.S.), 1497; and 

 two letters from the Milanese Minister, Raimondo di Soncino, 

 to the Duke of Milan, dated August 24 (September 2, N.S.), 

 and December 18 (27, N.S.), 1497. 



(2) An entry in the accounts of the King of England's 

 privy purse, from which we see that Cabot was back in 

 London by August 10 (19, N.S.), 1497. 



(3) The map of the world, drawn in 1500, by the well-known 

 Spanish pilot, Juan de la Cosa. 



(4) A Bristol chronicle by Maurice Toby, written in 1565, 

 but from older sources. 



1 Between 1493 and 1500 at least thirty expeditions went in search of the 

 coast of America. These were all certainly provided with charts, and some 

 of them also produced maps of their discoveries, but not one of these has 

 been preserved. [Cf. Harrisse, 1900, p. 14.] 

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