84 SAMUEL EDWARD DAW80X OX THE 



An êudeaviiur was also made to show, quite independently of the map of 1544, that John 

 Cabot, on his first voyage, oversailed Cape Race and made the next natural landfall, the 

 east point of Cape Breton island. It has been also shown that, after the sailing of the 

 second expedition, the whole Cabot family disappeared for ever from history, excepting 

 Sebastian alone. He also disappears for fourteen years, when he emerges in Spain. A few 

 scattered indications survive of voyages meanwhile from England to the " new found 

 islands," but he cannot be positively identified with any of them. What he did in the 

 interim is not known. lie probably made maps. Suddenly, in 1512, he appears in the 

 public accounts. Henry VIII. had joined Ferdiinind of Spain in a league against France, 

 and was preparing an expedition to assist in an attack from Spain upon the south of France, 

 and, in May, 1512, Sebastian Cabot was employed to make a map of Guienne and Gascony, 

 the projected theatre of war. Then came sudden advancement. In September of the same 

 year Ferdinand wrote to Lord "Willoughby, the English commander, to have Cabot sent to 

 him. Under the same date he wrote to Cabot, inviting him to enter his service, with the 

 object, as appears elsewhere, of consulting him concerning the navigation to Baccalaos. In 

 October the king allotted to Cabot an annual salary of 50,000 maravedis, and gave him per- 

 mission to go and fetch his wife and family from England. No objection was raised there. 

 The English thought very little of the new lands. The expeditions thither had not been 

 profitable. No gold had been found, nor had the rich spice regions of Cathay been readied. 

 Three savages, clothed in skins, seem to have been the only returns made — certainly the 

 only returns recorded. There was no market for English manufactures with such people as 

 these. The English of Bristol had already a good, steady trade with Iceland, and from 

 thence all the codfish they needed could be procured. Why go further to a distant and 

 unknown country, where no goods could be sold? So Sebastian Cabot nnty depart whither 

 he may choose, with his wife, and his family, and his maps, and his theory of the sphere, 

 and his knowledge of Baccalaos. The English merchants will follow the lines of practical 

 common sense Imsiness ; and the king will continue to fortify the south coast, and to wage 

 war with France, and luis no time for remote and unprofitable enterprises. 



It may well be supposed that Cabot felt himself under no obligation to England. The 

 king of Spain had received him with great kindness, and had given him a large salary and 

 a distinguished position. He would have been more than human if lu) trace of resentment 

 rankled in his heart. For he was not, in truth, English-born, and had no patriotic obliga- 

 tion to guard English interests. Therefore, when he was made granil pilot of Spain and 

 head of the department of cartography at Seville, he quietly acquiesced in the suppression 

 on the maps he supervised of all traces of his father's voyage and his father's discoveries 

 for England. These were known to De Ayala and reported in his despatch to Spain. They 

 were known to La Cosa, and they were known to Robert Thorne, as shown by his letters 

 from Seville to the English ambassador and to king Henry VIIL, and were indicated on 

 his sketch map ; but upon the Spanish maps, nuxde under Cabot's supervision, they were 

 either ignored or thrust (as on Ribero's map) far away nortli to Greenland. The I'ope had 

 divided these unknown lands between Spain and Portugal, and these powers considered all 

 other nations as interlopers. Cabot was well recompensed by the king of Spain for the use 

 of that very knowledge of Baccalaos, which he, above others, possessed ; and that know- 

 ledge, underrated and even despised in England, was suppressed upim the Spanish and 

 Portuguese maps. That is the answ<?r to Harrisse's cpiestion,''" " Why, if Cabot's landfall 



