186 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



moned to speak, would declare it the last, and by no means the 

 least, of the long line of insults that an ungrateful posterity 

 had heaped upon his memory. 



It will be proper to add to this view of the voyages of Co- 

 lumbus a brief account of those effected immediately afterwards 

 by John and Sebastian Cabot, and by Vincent Yanez Pinzon. 



In the year 1496, Henry VII. of England, stimulated by the 

 success of Columbus, granted a patent to one Giovanni Gabotto, 

 a Venetian dwelling in Bristol, to go in search of unknown lands. 

 Little is known of this person, whose name has been Anglicized 

 into John Cabot, except that he was a wealthy and intelligent 

 merchant and fond of maritime discovery. He had three sons, 

 one of whom, named Sebastian, was nineteen years old at the 

 time of the voyage, upon which, with his brothers, he accom- 

 panied his father. They sailed in a ship named the Matthew, 

 and on the 24th of June, 1497, discovered the mainland of 

 America, eighteen months before Columbus set foot upon it at 

 the mouths of the Orinoco. For a long time it was supposed 

 that Cabot had landed upon Newfoundland, but it is now con- 

 sidered settled that Labrador was the portion of the continent 

 first discovered by a European. No account of the further 

 prosecution of the voyage has reached us, and the only official 

 record of Cabot's return is an entry in the privy-purse expenses 

 of Henry, 10th August, 1497 : — " To hym that found the New 

 Isle, 10/." Thus, fifty days had not elapsed between the dis- 

 covery and its recompense in England, — a fact which shows 

 that Cabot returned home at once. He is supposed to have 

 died about the year 1499. 



Sebastian Cabot, the second son, who is regarded as by far 

 the most scientific navigator of this family of seamen, appears 

 to have lived in complete obscurity during the following twelve 

 years. Disgusted, however, by the want of consideration of the 

 English authorities towards him, he accepted an invitation from 

 King Ferdinand to visit Spain in 1512. Here, for several 



