182 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



as a ^reat nautical theorizer. I suggested that many of the falsehoods at- 

 tributed to him might be due to the fact that they came through second- 

 hand reports ; that he might have been alwaj'S talking of the second 

 voyage, in which I believed he really took part, and that his su^jpression 

 of the facts of the first voyage might be due to the suspicious jealousj' of 

 the Spanish authorities. I expressly said (p. 85) that it is hard to believe 

 that Sebastian Cabot was a mere " pretender to nautical knowledge, 

 " because Ferdinand and Charles Y. were good judges of men, and they 

 " trusted him to the last." In former years Biddle and Nichols and 

 others had almost succeeded in effacing the memory of the father, and in 

 effecting an apotheosis of his son. Now that the pendulum has swung to 

 the other extreme, it is right to return for a moment and review my 

 estimate of his character in the light of these recent papers. 



I think Mr. Harrisse is quite justilied in saying that "Sebastian 

 " Cabot was a man capable of disguising the truth, whenever it was to 

 " his interest to do so." "^ In that respect I think he was, for the period, 

 in no way singular. I shall not venture to cite instances, for fear of stir- 

 ring up new controversies, but when we are told that " he was, in an age 

 *•' of mendacity and intrigue, the greatest liar of the age ;" ^^ that " his 

 " proved infamous character keeps him out of court ;" ™ that he was " an 

 " unmitigated charlatan, a liar and traitor," ^^ I think that the case against 

 him has been overstated. Other writers have taken up the same theme, 

 and I cannot help thinking that they are expecting from men of the 

 Eenaissance period a standard of candour which was not in vogue at that 

 time. There were similar wetik points even in the character of the great 

 admiral, brought out by Dr. Justin Winsor in his "Life." He was not 

 free from self-assertion and boastfulness, nor from jealousy of the merit 

 of others, nor from a tendency to arrogate for himself credit justly due 

 to his companions, and he was not always careful in such matters to 

 adhere closely to the truth. In Sebastian Cabot I think I see the defects 

 of the great admiral magnified, and, then, I still think there is much 

 force in the view expressed in the paper of 1894. The first voyage was 

 more a voyage of reconnaissance than an expedition. It was in one 

 small vessel, which returned quickly when it touched land ; but the 

 second w^as in reality an important enterjDrise and a survey of an ex- 

 tended coast, and I cannot help thinking he sailed on the second expedi- 

 tion and coasted from Labrador to Carolina. As I pointed out before, 

 every allusion to Sebastian Cabot's voyage and every report of it on 

 record contain notices of ice and northern latitudes. I shall not go over 

 the ground again, for it is fully covered in the papers already in the 

 *' Transactions." I am not in the least disposed to palliate Sebastian's 

 unfiiial conduct, and I think that, for a strictlj' accurate man, he was 

 born in too many places. I would, however, receive his tGstimony pro 

 tanto, and I would allow it to confirm and even to explain statements 



