WESTWARD HO ! 



invaluable work King Henry was pleased to present him with ten 

 pounds. 



Cabot's second voyage was made after he had gone into the Latin 

 countries in search of seamen who had already been across the Atlantic 

 or down the African coast, and in May, 1498, he sailed from Bristol 

 with two ships and three hundred men. In this voyage his first land- 

 fall was the East coast of the land which was later called Labrador and 

 instead of striking West he went North until his crew mutinied in latitude 

 67° 30'. He then rounded Cape Farewell and explored a good deal 

 of the coast until he was blocked by icebergs. He then went 

 to Baffin's Land but unfortunately he missed the opportunity of dis- 

 covering the St. Lawrence by mistaking Belle Isle Strait for a Bay. He 

 skirted the coast as far as latitude 38° North, always under the impres- 

 sion that he was coming to Japan, and returned to England a very dis- 

 appointed man without dreaming of the wonderful work that he had 

 done. 



Sebastian Cabot. 



His son Sebastian was born about 1476 but it is not certain whether 

 Venice or Bristol was his native place. He went with his father on both 

 his voyages and did useful work as a navigator for Henry VIII. King 

 Ferdinand of Spain took him into his service in 1512 as Captain of the 

 Navy for the special purpose of surveying the Newfoundland coast, but 

 this expedition came to nothing. In 1520 he came back to England and 

 was on the point of taking out an expedition on behalf of Henry VIII 

 when he was dissuaded by a friend and instead attempted to enter the 

 service of Venice. The transfer was postponed until a more appropriate 

 time and in the meanwhile he was given the command of three Spanish 

 ships on an Eastern expedition. He did some very useful work on the 

 coast of South America, but because he had been forced by the natives 

 to give up the gold that he had collected he was sentenced on his return 

 to four years' banishment. In 1538 he returned to England and among 

 his other positions was that of Life Governor of the Company of Mer- 

 chant Adventurers. It is believed that he died about 1557. He 

 appears to have been greatly loved by his townsfolk but to modern ideas 

 one cannot help thinking that he was a born opportunist, changing his 

 patron according to the price that he could extract. 

 The Guinea Coast and Brazil. 



The first discoverer of Brazil was Vicente Yanez Pinzon, who had 

 sailed in the Nifia with Columbus and who in the early weeks of 1499 

 was attempting to round Africa. In doing so he got carried too far to 

 the West and sighted the Brazilian coast near Cape St. Augustine. He 

 sailed a considerable distance up the Amazon hut made no attempt to 

 annex the country for his master and contented himself with taking him 

 some of the products that he had collected. Next year a Portuguese 

 named Pedro Cabral, attempting to emulate Vasco da Gama, was 

 carried to the Brazilian coast, which he immediatelv annexed for the 

 Crown of Portugal. He sent home a pinnace to Lisbon to beg the 



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