JOHN CABOT'S VOYAGES 



ment between the four hundred leagues of the three first- 

 named and of the seven hundred of Pasqualigo, but if we 

 interpret it, in what must be the most reasonable way, as 

 meaning that the distance of seven hundred leagues does not 

 refer to the nearest land, but to the most distant, where Cabot 

 thought that he had at last come within the boundaries of 

 the kingdom of the Great Khan (China) and did not venture 

 to go farther, then we have complete agreement, since the 

 three hundred leagues he must first have sailed along the coast 

 must be deducted in order to get the distance from England 

 to the nearest land. The length of a Venetian "lega," or 

 a Spanish " legua," cannot be precisely determined. If we 

 assume [cf. Kretschmer, 1909, pp. 63 f.] that between 20 

 and i'jYz went to a degree of latitude, each league would corre- 

 spond to between 3 and 3.43 geographical miles (minutes), 

 or between 5.6 and 6.3 kilometers. According to the former 

 estimate (three miles), four hundred leagues will be about 

 equal to 1200 miles, and seven hundred leagues to about 

 2100 miles. ^ The first distance is, at any rate, a good deal 

 too small, while the second is too great. This may easily 

 be explained by Cabot, or his crew, having naturally wished 

 to make the voyage to the newly discovered country appear as 

 little deterrent as possible, and, therefore, having under- 

 estimated the distance, while desiring to make the country 

 itself as large as possible, they greatly overestimated the length 

 of their sail along the coast. That the voyagers really supposed 

 the distance to the newly discovered land to be four hundred 

 leagues from Ireland, agrees also with Soncino's statement that 

 the Bristol sailors thought the voyage would not occupy more 

 than fifteen days from Ireland. 



La Cosa's map is drawn as an equidistant compass-chart, 

 and we can therefore make ourselves a scale of miles by using 

 the distance between the equator and the tropic. In this way 



1 The distance from Ireland to Newfoundland is fully 1600 geographical 

 miles, and to Cape Breton about 1900; but reckoned from Bristol it will be 

 about 280 miles more. 



