328 Henry Stevens's Historical and Geographical 
toward the west to 40° and 41°, from whence he brought certain 
Indians. Would an intelligent pilot sail north with such a 
craft in winter? Might not New England be the “great part” 
of land next to Bacalaos; and might not the fine tall natives 
of Rhode Island have been kidnapped, part being taken to Cu- 
ba for sale, the rest taken to Toledo, thus consuming the ten 
months, without having gone north of Cape Cod? Peter Mar- 
tyr “— writing also in 1526: “ He, neither finding the strait 
nor Cathay, which he promised, returned back within ten 
months from his departure. I always thought and presupposed 
this good man’s imaginations were vain and frivolous.” Her- 
rera, who wrote three quarters of a century later, is hardly more 
favorable to this explorer. 
he reader is referred, by recent writers, to the manuscript 
map of Ribero of 1529, now preserved at Weimar, for the re- 
t of Gomez’ voyage. But the intelligent reader will see 
with half an eye that this isa partizan map, and intentionally 
deceptive in the coast line between 33° 40’ and 50° N. The 
discoveries of the English are thrown into Greenland, and called 
Labrador, while Bacalaos is given to the Portuguese, and cut 
off by the line of demarcation. All the rest of the coast is 
closed up under the names of Gomez and Ayllon, and so given 
to Spain. There is no room left for the discoveries of Veraz- 
zano for the French in 1524. The Spaniards knew of his voy- 
ages, for they had been watching him, and caught him, and mm 
527 hanged hi a corsair. Indeed, the best that can be 
reasonably said of the voyage of Gomez is, that it exploded the 
ideal continent of the German geographers, and, connecting the 
explorations of Ayllon with New atatal, showed that the 
coast of North America trended continually eastward, so as 
probably to connect it with the discoveries of the Cabots, and 
thus make the whole coast west of the Line Spanish. 
Lucas Vasquez Ayllon, a lawyer, a Senator in 
Hispaniola, 
and a man of tion, immediately after the survey of the en- — 
Cape Fear, seeking for the passage to Cathay. He foun 
country, but to Asia no thoroughfare. The next year 
of the Regency of Hispani 
cil of the Indies] to have leave to de again into those coun 
ae 
