VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS IN 1497 AND 1498. 85 



had been really at Cape Breton in Baccalaos, did he not record it upon the maps he super- 

 vised while grand pilot of Spain ? " 



No doubt there was a want of eanddur in this course ; but caudnur was not a virtue in 

 those days, especially not in an Italian of the Renaissance which ('al)ot was to the very 

 core. Mr. Xicholls, the city librarian of Bristol (appendix G), has written a book exalting 

 him as a paragon of all virtue and knowledge. He pictures him, as in after years, " home- 

 sick for his native England" — as " ilying from the tyranny, cruelty and superstition of 

 Spain into the light of freedom and the gospel" ; and he triumphantly points to the instruc- 

 tions drawn up for the northeast expedition, in which Cabot enjoins the daily reading of 

 the Bible to the crew, as a proof of his evangelical zeal. But Cabot was of the colour of 

 the rock he sat upon, and Edward VI. was then reigning. In the service of the Grand 

 Turk he would have enjoined the reading of the Koran. While he was in the service of 

 Spain — in the receipt of great emoluments and high honours, he stealthily intrigued with 

 Venice to sell to that state the secret he claimed to possess of a short route to Cathay, and 

 he justified his course to the Venetian ambassador by stating that he was Venetian born, 

 and that his conscience smote him for not doing something on behalf of his native country. 

 This intrigue came to naught ; but when, in his old age, he went to England, he renewed 

 it while he was an English oificial and in receipt of English pay. At the same time he was 

 maintaining in England that he was English, and born in the city of Bristol. So he told 

 Richard Eden, and so it is set down in many English books. If, therefore, the map of 1544 

 were the only evidence of the landfall at Cape Breton, it would not, supposing it even to be 

 Cabot's work, be entitled to more acceptance tlian his nnqis while grand pilot of Spain. 

 Biddle, in his "Memoir of Sebastian Cabot" (appendix G), had gone very far in suppressing 

 the father in the interest of the son ; but the Bristol librarian, in what d' Avezac "" rightly 

 calls " parish patriotism " {patrioHsine dn. clocher), after mourning over what he fondly thinks 

 was Cabot's only lie, exhausts the language of approval by calling him the " founder of 

 England's mercantile marine " ; "the man who gave to England the carrying trade of the 

 world" and he caps the climax of eulogy by calling him "the father of free trade.'' 

 Henry Stevens, in his characteristic style, vindicates John Cabot's reputation in the formula 

 " Sebastian Cabot — John Cabot =^ Zero," and, of late years, the discovery of tresh documents 

 has re-established the merit of the elder Cabot. The balance is even inclining the other way ; 

 for Mr. Harrisse, in his last book, would seem to maintain that Sebastian Cabot was little 

 more than a pretender to nautical knowledge. This is hard to believe, because Ferdinand 

 and Charles V. were good judges of men, and they trusted him to the last. Indeed, when 

 in 1547, he, without the knowledge or consent of the emperor, transferred his services to 

 England, his salary was running on ; and he drew it, when in England, as long as Charles 

 V. would pay it, although he had no intention of going back to Spain, and with excellent 

 judgment had declined all requests to return to his official duties there. 



"While Sebastian Cabot was thus sitting as grand pilot at the centre of Spanish carto- 

 graphy, the French and Portuguese and Basques were diligently opening up the fisheries of 

 Baccalaos and following the whales down the Labrador coast through the straits of Belle-Isle 

 and into the Grand bay. All this Cabot must have known, but on the Spanish maps he 

 certified it was ignored. The first indication of a knowledge of the gulf appeared, as has 

 been already shown, on the Portuguese maps in the same year that Jacques Cartier sailed 

 into it from the north. The second vovaa'e of Cartier revealed to the world the g-ulf and 



