[s. B. DAWSON] THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 187 



his ingratitude and treachery to his friend and benefactor, the Earl of 

 Essex ; or because he degraded the high office of a judge by pandering to 

 tyranny and accepting bribes from suitors before his court ; and, with all 

 his faults, Sebastian Cabot was morally the better of the two. We must 

 remember that Cabot was a man without a country — a foreigner in Eng- 

 land as in Spain, and the holder of an official jiosition in both countries, 

 which imposed upon him definite official duties. 



One fact stares us in the face at the outset, that, while maps were 

 freel}' engraved and printed in all parts of Italy, Germany and France, 

 none were printed in Spain — in the very country whose colonial exten- 

 sion required them the most. Kohl says, and Winsor adds his testimony, 

 that not even an edition of " Ptolemy " was printed there.™ The little 

 map in the first edition of Peter Martyr quickly disappeared and was not 

 reprinted. In 1549 there was a little map in Medina's Arte di Navegar, 

 and a little one in Gomara in 1554. These are all and they were useless, 

 being insignificant in size and detail. In a list of 200 printed maps given 

 by Ortelius^^ in his great atlas in A,D. 1570, not one was printed in Spain, 

 and among eighty makers of maps not one was a resident there. " This," 

 says Winsor, "shows how eiiectually the council of the Indies had con- 

 " cealed the cartographical records of their office." ^^ The extreme rarity 

 of the Peter Martyr map is attributed by Nordenskiold to the " suppres- 

 " sion of the small drawing by the suspicious Spanish authorities,"^- and 

 Brevoort, commenting on the same fact, refers to the "jealous sensitive- 

 " ness of Sixain. regarding her marine charts " -^ as the cause. Nordenskiold 

 mentions the three maps above cited, and adds " that, with the excep- 

 " tion of some copies of mediœval maps which I suppose to exist in 

 " Sjjanish editions of classical authors, this seems to be about the whole 

 " contribution during the earliest period of printed cartographical litera- 

 " ture from the countries from which the new world and the southeast 

 " passage to India were discovered, and from which hundreds of the most 

 " important voyages of discovery started during that period."^* 



" The kings of Spain," says Kohl, " from the very commencement of 

 " the discovery of America, observed great caution and reserve, and gave 

 " strict orders about the safe keeping of the maps which their captains 

 *' and conquerors brought home from the new world. All the originals of 

 " these maps were deposited in the archives of Seville, and copies of them 

 " were issued only to such Spanish sea captains and generals as could be 

 " trusted. No map of Columbus, none of Cortes, of Magellan, or any of 

 " the other innumerable explorers, was allowed to be engraved and pub- 

 " lished ; and the consequence of this system has been that nearly all 

 " these interesting documents are lost to us forever."" 



" There is," says Dr. Winsor, " abundant evidence of the non-com- 

 " municative policy of Spain." '^ In this point, at least, I have the sup- 

 port of almost every writer of note, and the " liberal spirit which ani- 



