^30 THE NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERY QUESTION. 



"Another adjoining island they called St. John, probably from the Saint's day on which 

 it was discovered. 



"On this island, as they supposed it to be, which was the South-west part of New- 

 foundland, they found inhabitants who were clothed with the skins of beasts, and who 

 used bows, arrows, pikes, darts, wooden clubs, and slings. 



" Three of these natives were brought with them to England." 



The Encyclopcedia Metropolitana, published in 1845, says : — 



" Whatever may have been the diversity of opinion as to priority of discovery (of 

 the New Worlds), there is and can be none in regard to another, and, to English- 

 men, a more important fact, that We.stern America was discovered for England by 

 Giovanni Gabeto, or, as he is more generally known, John Cabot, and his sons, before 

 Columbus discovered the Southern continent of that vast hemisphere. 



"That celebrated Venetian, who had fixed his residence in Bristol, had little 

 difficulty in prevailing on Henry VII. to grant him and his sons a commission 

 for the discovery of new regions in the West, and to equip a vessel for that 

 purpose. 



****** * 



" In March, 1495, that is, rather less than two years after the return of Columbus 

 from the first voyage, Cabot obtained his patent. It empowered him to take posses- 

 sion, in the English Monarch's name, of any countries unknown to Christian sove- 

 reigns, to place the English flag on their hills and towers, to open an exclusive 

 traffic with the inhabitants, free from all Custom House duties, on the condition of his 

 paying into the Royal treasure a fifth of all the gold and silver he might acquire, and 

 the same proportion of all his profits in trade. 



" In May, 1497, he embarked at Bristol with his second son, Sebastian, whose 

 name is greater than his own, in the vessel provided for him by the King, and accom. 

 panied by four smaller vessels, which the merchants of that city had the courage 

 to equip. 



' ' Resolving to avoid the track taken by Columbus, he steered in a westerly 

 direction, and soon discovered the Isles of Newfoundland and St. John's. 



"In this voyage he seems to have landed only twice on the. two islands, from 

 which he brought away three of the natives, and some of the botanical productions." 



Crantz, describing Columbus's visit, says : — 



" The English would not long remain idle spectators of these important transac- 

 tions, Henry VII., in 1497, sent out Sebastian Cabot to seek a passage to the East 

 Indies, N.W. above America. Cabot discovered the whole coast of North America and 

 Newfoundland, which the English took possession of, and planted many fine Colonies, 

 which, by industrious cultivation and traffic have acquired to the Crown more durable 

 power and more inexhaustible opulence than the mines of Mexico and Peru. The 

 story of the two Venetians of note, Nicholas and Antony Zcni, having been there in 

 1389, has, since that time, as no intelligence could be had, been counted a fiction." 



