JOHN CABOT'S VOYAGES 



In addition to all this, there are in the various accounts 

 several statements v^^hich we must suppose to be really derived 

 from Sebastian Cabot, but which are evidently untruthful. 

 Thus, Ramusio's anonymous guest attributes to Sebastian the 

 words that his father was dead when the news of the discovery 

 of Columbus reached England, and that it was then Sebastian 

 conceived the plan of his voyage which he submitted to the 

 King. That, as stated by Peter Martyr, he should have fitted 

 out two ships with crews of three hundred men at his own 

 expense, is extremely improbable. He is also reported to 

 have told Peter Martyr that he 



" called these countries ' Bacallaos,' because in the seas about there he found 

 such great quantities of certain large fish — which might be compared to tunny 

 [in size], and were thus called by the inhabitants — that sometimes they 

 stopped his ships." 



These are nothing but impossibilities. In the first place, 

 he never gave the name of " Bacallaos " ; in the second, the 

 inhabitants cannot have called the fish so, if by inhabitants 

 is meant the native savages. These statements are, therefore, 

 of the same kind as that of the masses of fish stopping the ships. 

 Peter Martyr further relates that he said of these regions 

 that 



" he also found people in these parts, clad in skins of animals, yet not without 

 the use of reason." He says also that " there are a great number of bears in 

 these parts, which are in the habit of eating fish; for, plunging into the water 

 where they see quantities of these fish, they fasten their claws into their 

 scales, and thus draw them to land and eat them, so that [as he says] the bears 

 are not troublesome to men, when they have eaten their fill of fish. He de- 

 clares also that in many places of these regions he saw great quantities of 

 copper among the inhabitants." 



The Statement about the bears may come from older 

 literary sources, and resembles a similar statement in the 

 " Geographia Universalis " (see above, p. 191). That the inhabi- 

 tants have copper and are clad in skins may be derived from 

 reports of the various voyages. 



From what we have been able to conclude as to Sebastian 

 Cabot's character, it seems reasonable to suppose that, in 

 consequence of his position as "pilot major" in Spain, he was 



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