[TiiAciiERj THE CABOTIAN DISCOVERY SOI 



June 22, 1553, makes the following statement : "As many years past it 

 was written unto me by Signer Sebastian Cabot, our Venetian country- 

 man, a man of great experience, and very rare in the art of navigation, 

 and the knowledge of cosmographie, who sailed along and beyond this 

 land of New France, at the charge of King Henry the seventh of Eng- 

 land. And he advertised me that, having sailed a long time West, and by 

 North beyond those islands unto the latitude of 6*7 degrees and a half, 

 under the North Pole, and at the 11th day of June, tinding still open sea, 

 without any nianer of impediment, he thought v^erily of that way to 

 have passed on still the way to Cathaia, which is the East, and would have 

 done it. if the mutinie of the shipmavkers and mariners had not hindered 

 him and made him to returne homewards from that place." Some 

 writers make this account refer to the supposed voyage of Sebastian 

 Cabot in 1516 or 1517. 1 do not believe such a voyage ever occurred, for 

 several reasons, one of which, in paiticular, I will shortly give. The land 

 of new France was the country viewed by Jacques Cartier and othem 

 from 1534 to 1543, and which was taken possession of in the name of the 

 Eiench king, Francis I. This would corroborate the Cape Ereton land- 

 fall theory, as the lands of new France were in that region, and Sebastian 

 is made to say he sailed "along and beyond this land." If an early navi- 

 gator failed to report a mutiny on board his ship, the historian was in 

 duty bound to introduce it. It was recognized as an essential featui-e in 

 the drama of navigation. Columbus, in his diary, wrote, two days before 

 he saw hind, '-The crew complained of the long voyage." and Washing- 

 ton Irving, in his life of Columbus, proceeded to indict every man for 

 mutiny. There is no contemporaneous authority for the story of the 

 mutin}' on Cabot's ship. 



Kamusio has recorded the sîory of Sebastian Cabot, as told to the 

 gentleman from Mantua. This, too, was translated into English, and 

 appears in llakluyt. The anonymous Mantuan gentleman is supposed ta 

 be speaking : 



•' Doe you not vnderstand, sayd hee (speaking to certaine Gentlemen 

 of Venice), how to i)asse to India toward the Northwest winde, as did of 

 late a citizen of Venice, so valiant a man, and so well practised in all 

 things pertaining to Nauigations and the science of Cosmographie, that 

 at this present hee hath not his like in Spaine, insomuch that for his vir- 

 tues he is preferi-ed aboue all other pilots that saile to the West Indies, 

 who may not pass thither without his licence, and is, therefore, called 

 Piloto Maggioi-e (that is), the grand Pilot. And, when we said that wee 

 knew him not, he proceeded, saying that, being certaine yeeres in the 

 city of Siuil, and desirous to haue some knowledge of the Nauigations of 

 the Spaniards, it was told him that there was in the citie a valiant man, a 

 Venetian borne, named Sebastian Cabot, who had the charge of those 

 things, being an expert man in that science, and one that could make 



