[thacher] the CABOTIAN DISCOVERY 305 



or the 24th of June, as the day of discovery. Considered in the liglit of 

 documents and public papers contemporaneous with the event, this land- 

 fall does not seem possible. Not only was John Cabot deliberateh' seeking 

 a point far north of Cape Breton, not only do the reports show he sailed 

 toward that point and purposely mapped a course on a short circle, but 

 nearly all the early maps showed the first Cabotian discoveries near the 

 60th degree of latitude. It is evident that the printed documents — Peter 

 Martyr's account, Eamusio's story, and the map of 1544 — all confound 

 and include the two Cabotian voyages made respectively in 1497 and 

 1498. I do not believe that Sebastian Cabot made any subsequent voy- 

 ages to the northeast coast of America. There is a passage in Peter 

 Martyr's "Decades," immediately following the account I have read 3'ou, 

 in which he uses the words : " Some Spaniards deny that Cabot was 

 the lii-st tinder of the Baccalaos, and affirm that he went not so far west- 

 ward." His own adopted countrymen likewise suspected him. You will 

 remember we found England toward the close of the fifteenth century a 

 country of artificers. Trades were well defined, and each had its own 

 organization, guild or corpoi'ation, until they grew and developed into 

 the twelve gi-eat livery companies of London. In March, 1521, Henry 

 VIII. proposed to Sebastian Cabot that he should lead an expedition, and 

 the twelve companies were expected to conti'ibute toward the expense. 

 The important Drapers' Company protested to king and council against 

 the proposed expedition, and used these words : 



" We thynk it were to sore avent'r to jopei'd V shipps wt men and 

 goods unto the said Hand (the newe found land) uppon the singular trust 

 of one man, callud, as we understand, Sebastuan, which Sebastyan, as we 

 here say, was nevr in that land hymself, all if he makes reports of manj^ 

 things as he hat heard his father and other men speke in tymes past." 

 Such words as these would not have been officially used if Sebastian had 

 made the voyage of 151(! or 1517, and it is hard to believe such a charge 

 would have been made by a responsible corporation if it were a matter 

 of public notoriety that Sebastian had made the voyages. 



The outlook we have obtained ought to disclose two distinct voyages 

 made by John Cabot — the first sailing from Bristol in one ship in 1497, 

 between the beginning of May and the beginning of August, discovering 

 land near Hudson straits; the second leaving Bristol in the spring of 

 1498, and exploring the northeast coast from above the (iOth ])arallel of 

 north latitude, along the entire coast of the present Canada and the coast 

 of our own Canada down to the region of Chesapeake bay. 



And now with abounding patience you have followed me in a his- 

 torical inquiry over a region as cold and sterile as the coast of Labrador. 

 We have picked our way through great ice-fields of doubt, and drifted 

 with currents of speculation and uncertainty. But there is one spot on 

 which we stand, with a green field beneath our feet and over our head 



Sec. II., 1897. 17. 



