Yale Umvt isitV iv l Itirarv )002002599042 «*M YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA Cnglis^ Colorations AND Settlements! IN Nortij America 1497-1689 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA EDITED By JUSTIN WINSOR LIBRARIAN OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY CORRESPONDING SECRETARY MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY Vol. Ill BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY €Jje ftttoergifce fto#, Cambribge Copyright, 1884, By James R. Osgood and Company. All rights reserved. CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [The English arms on the title are copied from the Molineaux map, dated 1600.] Page EDITOR'S NOTE v CHAPTER I. The Voyages of the Cabots. Charles Deane .......... i Illustration : Sebastian Cabot, 5. Autographs : Henry VII., 1 ; Henry VIII., 4; Edward VI., 6; Queen Mary, 7. Critical Essay « Illustrations: LaCosamap (1500), phototype, 8; Ruysch's map (1508), 9; Oron- tius Fine's map (1531), 11; Stobnicza's map (1512), 13; Page of Peter Mar tyr in fac-simile, 15 ; Thome's map (1527), 17 ; Sebastian Cabot's map (1544), 22 ; -Lok's map (1582), 40 ; Hakluyt-Martyr map (1587), 42 ; Portuguese Por- tolano ( 1 514-1520), 56. CHAPTER II. Hawkins and Drake. Edward E. Hale 59 Illustrations: John Hawkins, 61; Zaltieri's map (1566), 67; Furlano's map (1574), 68. Autographs : John Hawkins, 61 ; Francis Drake, 65. Critical Essay on Drake's Bay 74 Illustrations: Modern map of California coast, 74; Viscaino's map (1602), 75; Dudley's map (1646), 76, 77 ; Jeffreys' sketch-map (1753), 77. Notes on the Sources of Information. The Editor 78 Illustrations: Hondius's map, 79; Portus Novas Albionis, 80; Molineaux's map (1600), 80; Sir Francis Drake, 81, 84; Thomas Cavendish, 83. VBii CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. Explorations to the North- West. Charles C. Smith . 85 Illustrations: Martin Frobisher, 87 ; Molineaux globe (1592), 90; Molineaux map (1600), 91; Sir Thomas Smith, 94; James's map of Hudson Bay (1632), 96. Autographs : Martin Frobisher, 87 ; John Davis, 89 ; George Waymouth, 91 ; William Baffin, 94. Critical Essay 97 Illustration : Luke Fox's map of Baffin's Bay (1635), 98. The Zeno Influence on Early Cartography ; Frobisher's and Hudson's Voyages. The Editor 100 Illustrations: The Zeno map (circa 1400), 100; map in Wolfe's Linschoten (1598), 101 ; Beste's map (1578^, 102; Frobisher's Strait, 103. CHAPTER IV. Sir Walter Ralegh : Settlements at Roanoke and Voyages to Guiana. William Wirt Henry 105 Autographs : Walter Ralegh, 105; Queen Elizabeth, 106; Ralph Lane, no. Critical Essay 121 Illustrations: White's map in Hariot (1587), 124; De Laet's map (1630), 125. Autograph: Francis Bacon, 121. CHAPTER V. Virginia, 1606-1689. Robert A. Brock 127 Illustrations : Jamestown, 130 ; George Percy, 134 ; Seal of the Virginia Company, 140; Lord Delaware, 142. Autographs: King James, 127; Delaware, 133; Thomas Gates, 133; George Percy, 134; George Calvert, 146; William Berkeley, 147. Critical Essay te^ Autographs: William Strachey, 156; Delaware, 156; John Harvey, 156; John West, 164. Notes on the Maps of Virginia, etc. The Editor x6y Illustration: Smith's map of Virginia or the Chesapeake, phototype, 167. CHAPTER VI. Norumbega and its English Explorers. Benjamin F. De Costa .... 169 Illustration : Map of Ancient Pemaquid, 177. Autographs: J. Popham, 175; Ferd. Gorges, 175. CONTENTS. ix Critical Essay ig^ Illustrations: Modern map of Coast of Maine, 190; Henri II. map (1543), 195; Hood's map (1592), 197; Smith's map of New England (1616), 198. Earliest English Pubucations on America, and other Notes. The Editor 199 Illustrations: Title of Eden's Minister, 200; Minister's map (1532), 201, (1540), 201 ; Title of Stultifera Nauis (1570), 202; Gilbert's map (1576), 203; Linschoten, 206; John G. Kohl, 209; Lenox globe (1510-1512), 212; Ex tract from Molineaux globe (1592), 213; Frankfort globe (1515), 215; Molineaux map (1600), 216. Autographs : Humphrey Gilbert, 203 ; Richard Hakluyt, 204 ; Jul. Caesar, 205 ; Ro. Cecyll, 206; John Smith, 211. CHAPTER VII. The Religious Element in the Settlement of New England. — Puritans and Separatists in England. George E. Ellis 219 Critical Essay 244 CHAPTER VIII. The Pilgrim Church and Plymouth Colony. Franklin B. Dexter . . . 257 Illustrations: Site of Scrooby Manor-House, 258 ; Map of Scrooby and Aus- terfield, 259 ; Austerfield church, 260 ; Record of William Bradford's baptism, 260; Robinson's House in Leyden, 262; Plan of Leyden, 263; Map of Cape Cod Harbor, 270; Map of Plymouth Harbor, 272; Historic Swords, 274; Governor Edward Winslow, 277 ; Pilgrim relics, 279 ; Governor Josiah Winslow, 282. Autographs : John Smyth, 257 ; John Robinson, 259 ; Robert Browne, 261 ; Francis Johnson, 261 ; Signatures of Mayflower Pilgrims (William Brad ford, Myles Standish, William Brewster, John Alden, John Howland, Edward Winslow, George Soule, Francis Eaton, Isaac Allerton, Samuel Fuller, Peregrine White, Resolved White, John Cooke), 268; Dorothy May, 268; William Bradford, 268; Thomas Cushman, 271 ; Alexander Standish, 273; James Cole, senior, 273 ; Signers of the Patent, 1621 (Hamilton, Lenox, Warwick, Sheffield, Ferdinando Gorges), 275; Governors of Plymouth Colony (William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Thomas Prence, Thomas Hinckley, Josiah Winslow), 278. Critical Essay z83 Illustrations: Extract from Bradford's History, 289; First page, Plymouth Records, 292. Autograph: Nathaniel Morton, 291. CHAPTER IX. New England. Charles Deane. 295 Illustrations: Dudley's map of New England (1646), 303; Alexander's map (1624), 306; John Wilson, 313; Dr. John Clark, 315; John Endicott, 317; Hingham meeting-house, 319; Joseph Dudley, 320; John Winthrop of Con necticut, 331 ; John Davenport, 332; Map of Connecticut River (1666), 333. X CONTENTS. Autographs: William Blaxton, 311 ; Samuel Maverick, 311 ; Thomas Wal- ford, 311 ; Mathew Cradock, 312; John Wilson, 313; Quaker autographs, 314; John Endicott, 317; Colonial ministers of 1690 (Charles Morton, James Allen, Michael Wigglesworth, Joshua Moody, Samuel Willard, Cot ton Mather, Nehemiah Walter), 319; Joseph Dudley, 320; Abraham Shurt, 321; Thomas Danforth, 326; Thomas Hooker, 330; John Haynes, 331; John Winthrop, the younger, 331; John Allyn, 335; William Coddington, 336; Samuel Gorton, 336; Narragansett proprietors (Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Denison, Thomas Willett, Jno. Paine, Edward Hutchinson, Amos Richison, John Alcocke, George Denison, William Hudson), 338; Roger Williams, 339. Critical Essay 34° Illustrations : Seal of the Council for New England, 342 ; Cotton Mather, 345 ; Ship of the seventeenth century, 347 ; Fac-simile of a page of Thomas Lechford's Plaine Dealing, 352 ; James Savage's manuscript note on Lech- ford, 353 ; Beginning of Thomas Shepard's Autobiography, 355. Autographs : Leaders in Pequot war (John Mason, Israel Stoughton, Lion Gardiner), 348 ; Jonathan Brewster, 349 ; Nathaniel Ward, 350 ; Signatures connected with the Indian Bible (Robert Boyle, Peter Bulkley, William Stoughton, Joseph Dudley, Thomas Hinckley, John Cotton, John Eliot, James Printer), 356; Edward Johnson, 358; John Norton, 358; Edward Burrough, 359; Robert Pike, 359; Benjamin Church, 361 ; Thomas Church, 361 ; William Hubbard, 362 ; Walter Neale, 363 ; Ferdinando Gorges, 364 ; John Mason, 364; Roger Goode, 364; Thomas Gorges, 364; Connecticut secretaries (John Steel, Edward Hopkins, Thomas Welles, John Cullick, Daniel Clark, John Allyn), 374. Bibliographical Notes ; Early Maps of New England. The Editor . . 380 Illustrations: Maps of New England (1650), 382, (1680), 383. Autograph : John Carter Brown, 381. CHAPTER X. The English in New York. John Austin Stevens 385 Illustrations : Sir Edmund Andros, 402 ; Great Seal of Andros, 410. Autographs: Commissioners (Richard Nicolls, Sir Robert Carr, George Cart- wright, Samuel Maverick), 388; Francis Lovelace, 395; Thomas Dongan, 404; Jacob Leisler, 411. Critical Essay 411 Notes. The Editor 414 Illustrations: View of New York (1673), 4l65 View of The Strand, 417 ; Plan of New York, 418 ; Stadthuys (1679), 410- Autograph : Thomas Willett, 414. CHAPTER XI. The English in East and West Jersey, 1664-1689. William A. Whitehead . 421 Autographs: King James, 421; Richard Nicoll, 421 ; Robert Carr, 422; John Berkeley, 422; G. Carteret, 423; Philip Carteret, 424; James Bollen, 428; Edward Byllynge, 430 ; Gawen Laurie, 430 ; Nicolas Lucas, 430 ; Edmond Warner, 430; R. Barclay, 436; Earl of Perth, 439. CONTENTS. xi Critical Essay .... 449 Note. The Editor „c Illustration: Sanson's map (1656), 456. NOTE ON NEW ALBION. Gregory B. Keen 457 Illustrations : Insignia of the Albion knights, 462 ; Fairer map of Virginia (1651), 465. Autograph : Robert Evelin, 458. CHAPTER XII. The Founding of Pennsylvania. Frederick D. Stone 469 Illustrations: George Fox, 470; William Penn, 474; Letitia Cottage, 483; Seal and Signatures to Frame of Government, 484 ; Slate-roof House, 492. Autographs : William Penn, 474 ; Thomas Wynne, 486 ; Charles Mason, 489 ; Jeremiah Dixon, 489 ; Thomas Lloyd, 494. Critical Essay 495 Illustrations : Title of Some Account, etc., 496; Title of Frame of Government, 497 ; Receipt and Seal of Free Society of Traders, 498 ; Gabriel Thomas's map (16983, 501; Seal of Pennsylvania, 511; Section of Holme's map of Pennsylvania, 516. CHAPTER XIII. The English in Maryland, 1632-1691. William T. Brantly 517 Illustrations : George, first Lord Baltimore, 518; Baltimore arms, 520; Map of Maryland (1635), 525; Endorsement of Toleration Act, 535; Baltimore coins, 543 ; Cecil, second Lord Baltimore, 546. Autographs: George, first Lord Baltimore, 518; Leonard Calvert, 524; John Lewger, 528 ; Thomas Greene, 533 ; Margaret Brent, 533 ; William Stone, 534 ; Josias Fendall, 540 ; Charles Calvert, 542. Critical Essay 553 Autograph : Thomas Yong, 558. INDEX 563 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. CHAPTER I. THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. BY CHARLES DEANE, LL. D. Vice-President, Massachusetts Historical Society. WE derive our rights in America," says Edmund Burke, in his Account of the European Settlements in America, " from the dis covery of Sebastian Cabot, who first made the Northern Continent in 1497. The fact is sufficiently certain to establish a right to our settlements in North America." If this distinguished writer and statesman had substi tuted the name of John Cabot for that of Sebastian, he would have stated the truth. John Cabot, as his name is known to English readers, or Zuan Caboto, as it is called in the Venetian dialect, the discoverer of North America, was born, probably, in Genoa or its neighborhood. His name first appears in the archives of Venice, where is a record, under the date of March 28, 1476, of his naturalization as a citizen of Venice, after the usual residence of fifteen years. He pursued successfully the study of cosmography and the practice of navigation, and at one time visited Ara bia, where, at Mecca, he saw the caravans which came thither, and was told that the spices they brought were received from other hands, and that they came orig inally from the remotest countries of the east. Accept ing the new views as to " the roundness of the earth," as Columbus had done, he was quite disposed to put them to a practical test. With his wife, who was a Venetian woman, and his three sons, he removed to England, and ' . . , , ... -, r t> • ^ 1 SIGN MANUAL OF took up his residence at the maritime city of Bristol. henry vii. The time at which this removal took place is uncertain. In the year 1495 he laid his proposals before the king, Henry VII., who on the 5th of March, 1495/5, granted to him and his three sons, their heirs and vol. m. — 1. 2 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. assigns, a patent for the discovery of unknown lands in the eastern, western, or northern seas, with the right to occupy such territories, and to have ex clusive commerce with them, paying to the King one fifth part of all the profits, and to return to the port of Bristol. The enterprise was to be " at their own proper cost and charge." In the early part of May in the follow ing year, 1497, Cabot set sail from Bristol with one small vessel and eighteen persons, principally of Bristol, accompanied, perhaps, by his son Sebastian ; and, after sailing seven hundred leagues, discovered land on the 24th of June, which he supposed was " in the territory of the Grand Cham." The legend, " prima tierra vista," was inscribed on a map attributed to Sebastian Cabot, composed at a later period, at the head of the delineation of the island of Cape Breton. On the spot where he landed he planted a large cross, with the flags of England and of St. Mark, and took possession for the King of England. If the statement be true that he cpasted three hundred leagues, he may have made a periplus of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, returning home through the Straits of Belle Isle. On his return he saw two islands on the starboard, but for want of provisions did not stop to examine them. He saw no human beings, but he brought home certain implements ; and from these and other indications he believed that the country was in habited. He returned in the early part of August, having been absent about three months. The discovery which he reported, and of which he made and exhibited a map and a solid globe, created a great sensation in Eng land. The King gave him money, and also executed an agreement to pay him an annual pension, charged upon the revenues of the port of Bristol. He dressed in silk, and was called, or called himself, " the Great Admiral." Preparations were made for another and a larger expedition, evidently for the purpose of colonization, and hopes were cherished of further important discoveries; for Cabot believed that by starting from the place already found, and coasting toward the equinoctial, he should discover the island of Cipango, the land of jewels and spices, by which they hoped to make in London a greater warehouse of spices- than existed in Alexandria. His companions told marvellous stories about the abundance of fish in the waters of that coast, which might foster an enterprise that would wholly supersede the fisheries of Iceland. On the 3d of February 1497/8 the King granted to John Cabot (the sons are not named) a license to take up six ships, and to enlist as many men as should be willing to go on the new expedition. He set sail, says Hakluyt, quoting Fabian, in the beginning of May, with, it is supposed, three hundred men, and accom panied by his son Sebastian. One of the vessels put back to Ireland in distress, but the others continued on their voyage. This is the last we hear of John Cabot. His maps are lost. It is believed that Juan de la Cosa, the Spanish pilot, who in the year 1500 made a map of the Spanish and English discoveries in the New World, made use of maps of the Cabots now lost. Sebastian Cabot, the second son of John Cabot, was born in Venice, THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. 3 probably about the year 1473. He was early devoted to the study of cosmography, in which science his father had become a proficient, and Sebastian was largely imbued with the same spirit of enterprise ; and on the removal of his father with his family to England, he lived with them at Bristol. His name first occurs in the letters patent of Henry VII., dated March 5, 1495 /g, issued to John Cabot and his three sons, Lewis, Se bastian, and Sancius, and to their heirs and assigns, authorizing them to discover unknown lands. There is some reason to believe that he accom panied his father in the expedition, already mentioned, on which the first discovery of North America was made ; but in none of the contemporary documents which have recently come to light respecting this voyage is Se bastian's name mentioned as connected with it. A second expedition, as already statsd, followed, and John Cabot is distinctly named as having sailed with it as its commander ; but thenceforward he passes out of sight. Sebas tian Cabot, without doubt, accompanied the expedition. No contemporary account of it was written, or at least published, and for the incidents of the voyage we are mainly indebted to the reports of others written at a later period, and derived originally from conversations with Sebastian Cabot him self; in all of which the father's name, except incidentally, as having taken Sebastian to England when he was very young, is not mentioned. In these several reports but one voyage is spoken of, and that, apparently, the voyage on which the discovery of North America was made ; but circumstances are narrated in them which could have taken place only on the second or a later voyage. With a company of three hundred men, the little fleet steered its course in the direction of the northwest in search of the land of Cathay. They came to a coast running to the north, which they followed to a great dis tance, where they found, in the month of July, large bodies of ice floating in the water, and almost continual daylight. Failing to find the passage sought around this formidable headland, they turned their prows and, as one account says, sought refreshment at Baccalaos. Thence, coasting southwards, they ran down to about the latitude of Gibraltar, or 36° N., still in search of a passage to India, when, their provisions failing, they returned to England. If the views expressed by John Cabot, on his return from his first voy age, had been seriously cherished, it seems strange that this expedition did not, at first, on arriving at the coast, pursue the more southerly direction, where he was confident lay the land of jewels and spices. They landed in several places, saw the natives dressed in skins of beasts, and making use of copper. They found the fish in such great abundance that the progress of the ships was sometimes impeded. The bears, which were in great plenty, caught the fish for food, — plunging into the water, fastening their claws into them, and dragging them to the shore. The expedition was expected back by September, but it had not returned by the last of October. ~ b 4 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. There is some evidence that Sebastian Cabot, at a later period, sailed on a voyage of discovery from England in company with Sir Thomas Pert, or Spert, but which, on account of the cowardice of his com panion, " took none effect." But the enterprise is involved in doubt and obscurity. In 1 5 12, after the death of Henry VII., and when Henry VIII. had been three years on the throne, Sebastian Cabot entered into the service of Fer dinand, King of Spain, arriving at Seville in September of that year, where he took AUTOGRAPH OF HENRY VIII. yp ^ residence . and on the 20th of October was appointed " Capitan de Mar," with an annual salary of fifty thousand maravedis.1 Preparations for a voyage of discovery were now made, and Cabot was to depart in March, 1516, but the death of Fer dinand prevented his sailing. On the 5th of February, 15 18, he was named, by Charles V, " Piloto Mayor y Examinador de Pilotos," as suc cessor of Juan de Solis, who was killed at La Plata in 1516. This, office gave him an additional salary of fifty thousand maravedis ; and it was soon afterwards decreed that no pilots should leave Spain for the Indies without being examined and approved by^Uim. In 1524 he attended, not as a member but as an expert, the celebrated junta at Badajoz, which met to decide the important question of the longitude of the Moluccas, — whether they were on the Spanish or the Portuguese side of the line of demarcation which followed, by papal consent in 1494, a meridian of longitude, making a fixed division of the globe, so far as yet undefined, between Spain and Portugal. On the second day of the session, April 15, he and two others delivered an opinion on the questions involved. In the following year an expedition to the Moluccas was projected, and under an agreement with the Emperor, executed at Madrid on the 4th of March, Sebastian Cabot was appointed its commander with the title of Captain-General. The sailing of the expedition was delayed by the in trigues of the Portuguese. In the mean time his wife, Catalina Medrano, who is again mentioned with her children a few years later, received by a royal order fifty thousand maravedis as a gratificacion. On April 3, 1526, the armada sailed from St. Lucar for the Spice Islands, intending to pass through the Straits of Magellan. It was delayed from point to point, and did not arrive on the coast until the following year, when Cabot entered the La Plata River. A feeling of disloyalty to their commander, the seeds of which had been sown from the beginning, broke out in open mutiny. He had, moreover, lost one of his vessels off the coast of Brazil. He therefore determined to proceed no farther at present, to send to the Emperor a report of the condition of affairs, and in the mean time to explore the La 1 An error in Eden's translation of a passage in Peter Martyr, written in 151 5, makes him a member of the Council of the Indies. THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. 5 Plata River, which had been penetrated by De Solis in 15 15. He remained in that country for several years, and returned in July or August, 1530. The details of this expedition are described in another volume of this work and by another hand. SEBASTIAN CABOT.1 1 [This cut follows a photograph taken from the Chapman copy of the original. The original was engraved when owned by Charles J. Harford, Esq., for Seyer's Memoirs of Bristol, 1824, vol. ii. p. 20S, and a photo-reduction of that engraving ap pears in Nicholl's Life of Sebastian Cabot. Other engravings have appeared in Sparks's Atner. Biog., vol. ix. etc. See Critical Essay. — Ed.] 6 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. As might have been expected, this enterprise was regarded at home as a failure, and Cabot had made many enemies in the exercise of his legitimate authority in quelling the mutinies which had from time to time broken out among his men. Complaints were made against him on his return. Sev eral families of those of his companions who were killed in the expedition brought suits against him, and he was arrested and imprisoned, but was liberated on bail. Public charges for misconduct in the affairs of La Plata were preferred against him ; and the Council of the Indies, by an order dated from Medina del Campo, Feb. i, 1532, condemned him to a banishment of two years to Oran, in Africa. I have seen no evidence to show that thjs sentence was carried into execution. Cabot, who on his return laid before the Emperor Charles V. his final report on the expedition, appears to hav,e fully justified himself in that monarch's esteem; for he soon resumed his duties as Pilot Major) an office which he retained till his final return to England. ' Cabot made maps and globes during his residence in Spain ; and a large mappe monde bearing date 1544, engraved on copper, and attrib uted to him, was found in Germany in 1843, and is now deposited in the National Library in Paris. This map has been the subject of much discussion. While in the employ of the Emperor, Cabot offered his services to his native country, Venice, but was unable to carry his pur pose into effect. He was at last desirous of returning to England, and the Privy Council, on Oct. 9, 1547, issued a warrant for his transportation from Spain " to serve and inhabit in England." He came over to England in that or the following year, and on Jan. 6, 1548/9, the King granted him a pen sion of £166 13s. 4d., to date from St. Michael's autograph of edward Day preceding (September 29), "in consideration of VI. OF ENGLAND. . , r , , t , , • , , . , the good and acceptable service done and to be done'' by him. In 1550 the Emperor, through his ambassador in Eng land, demanded his return to Spain, saying that Cabot was his Pilot Major under large pay, and was much needed by him, — that "he could not stand the king in any great stead, seeing he had but small practice in those seas ; " but Cabot declined to return. In that same year, June 4, the King renewed to him the patent of 1495/6, and in March, 155 1, gave him ^200 as a special reward. The discovery of a passage to China by the northwest having been deemed impracticable, a company of merchants was formed in 1553 to prosecute a route by the northeast, and Cabot was made its governor. He drew up the instructions for its management, and the expedition under Will- oughby was sent out, the results of which are well known. China was not reached, but a trade with Muscovy was opened through Archangel. After the accession of Mary to the Crown of England, the Emperor made another unsuccessful demand for Cabot's return to Spain. On Feb. 6, 1555/6, what is known as the Muscovy Company was chartered, and Cabot became its THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. 7 governor. Among the last notices preserved of this venerable man is an account, by a quaint old chronicler, of his presence at Gravesend, April 27, 1556, on board the pinnace, the " Serchthrift," then destined for a voyage of discovery to the northeast. It is related that after Sebastian Cabot, "and divers gentlemen and gentlewomen" had "viewed our pinnace, and tasted of such cheer as we could make them aboard, they went on shore, giving to our mariners right liberal rewards ; and the good old Gentleman, Master Cabota, gave to the poor most liberal alms, wishing them to pray for the good fortune and prosperous success of the ' Serchthrift,' our pinnace. And then at the sign of the ' Christopher,' he and his friends banqueted, and made me and them that were in the company great cheer ; and for very joy that he had to see the towardness of our intended discovery he entered into the dance himself, amongst the rest of the young and lusty company, — which being ended, he and his friends departed most gently commending us to the governance of Almighty God." Cabot's pension, granted by the late King, was renewed to him by Queen Mary Nov. 27, 1555 ; but on May 27, 1557, he resigned it, and two days later a new grant was issued to him and William Worthington, jointly, of the same amount, by which he was de- «^j .n prived of one half his pay. This is the /yZ^5V£ \hl CjU^tt^ last official notice of Sebastian Cabot. *- I He probably died soon afterwards, and autograph of queen mary. in London. Richard Eden, the translator and compiler, attended him in his last moments, and " beckons us, with something of awe, to see him die." He gives a touching account of the feeble and broken utterances of the dying man. Though no monument or gravestone marks his place of burial, which is unknown, his portrait is preserved, as shown on a preceding page. CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION. UNLIKE the enterprises of Columbus, Vespucius, and many other navigators who wrote accounts of their voyages and discoveries at the time of their occurrence, which by the aid of the press were published to the world, the exploits of the Cabots were unchronicled. Although the fact of their voyages had been reported by jealous and watchful liegers at the English Court to the principal cabinets of the Continent, and the map of their discoveries had been made known, and this had had its influence in lead ing other expeditions to the northern shores of North America, the historical literature relating to the discovery of America, as preserved in print, is, for nearly twenty years after the events took place, silent as to the enterprises and even the names of the Cabots. Scarcely anything has come down to us directly from these navigators themselves, and for what we know we have hitherto been chiefly indebted to the uncertain reports, in foreign languages, of conversations originally held with Sebastian Cabot many years afterwards, and sometimes related at second and third hand. Even the year in which 8 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. the voyage of discovery was made was usually wrongly stated, when stated at all, and for more°than two hundred years succeeding these events there was no mention made of more than one voyage.1 1 It will be understood that we now regard it as satisfactorily settled that "the voyage of dis covery took place in 1497, followed by a second voyage in 1498. I have spoken of the map of the discoveries of the Cabots being made known to rival courts. In a letter dated Dec. 18, 1497, written from London by the Abbe Raimondo, envoy of the Duke of Milan to the Court of Henry VII., re cently brought to light, and printed on page 54, the writer, speaking of the return of John Cabot from his voyage of discovery, says : " This Mas ter John has the description of the world in a chart, and also in a solid globe, which he has made, and he shows where he had landed." Don Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish Minister, also writes to Ferdinand and Isabella, in the follow ing year, July 25, 149S, after the second expedi tion had sailed : " I have seen the map which the discoverer has made." In the year 1500, the Spanish navigator, Juan de la Cosa, who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to the West in the years 1493- 96, compiled a map of the world on which he delineated all he knew of the Spanish and Portu guese discoveries in the New World. He also depicted, undoubtedly from English sources, the northern portion of the east coast of the conti nent, as is shown by a broad legend or inscrip tion running along the coast : " Mar descubierta por Ingleses." There was also placed at the eastern cape of the coast : " Cavo de Yngla- terra." It is the earliest map known on which the western discoveries are depicted. A few copies of the map are supposed to have been made soon after its compilation, one of which hung up in the office of the Spanish Minister of Marine. The map afterwards fell into neglect and was forgotten. In the year 1832 it was found and identified by Humboldt, in the library of his friend the Baron Walckenaer, in Paris. [It is on ox-hide, measuring five feet nine inches by three feet two inches, drawn in colors, and was afterwards bought in 1850 for 4,020 francs (see Walckenaer Catalogue, no. 2,904) by the Queen of Spain, and is now in the Royal Li brary at Madrid. See Humboldt's appendix to Ghillany's Gcschichte des Secfahrers Ritter Martin Behaim, and the appendix to Kunstmann's Ent- deckung Amerikas ; also Kohl's Discovery of Maine, 151, 179. This Cosa map is given in part full-size and in part half-size, in Humboldt's Examen Critique, vol. v., 1839, but not accu rately ; and again in connection with Humboldt's essay in Ghillany's Behaim, NUrnberg, 1S53. This essay was also issued at Amsterdam in the Seeskabinet, with the fac-simile of the map. The only full-size fac-simile in colors is in three sheets in Jomard's Monuments de la Geographie, pi. 16; and there are reductions of the American portion in Stevens's Hist, and Geog. Notes, 1869, pi. 1 (following Jomard's delineation) ; in De la Sagra's Cuba ; in Lelewel's Giog. du Moyen Age, 1852, no. 41. A biographical study oijuan de la Cosa, by Enrique de Leguina, was published at Madrid in 1877. Cosa died while accompanying Ojedo in December, 1509. Peter Martyr, in 1514, gave him a high rank as a cartographer. The American (Asian) part of his map is given in heliotype herewith, reduced from Jomard's fac simile. — Ed.] Some have supposed that Cosa drew his whole eastern coast of North America as a sepa rate and independent continent, entirely distinct from Asia, on the authority of the maps of the Cabots on which their discoveries were delinea ted. Of course, in the absence of the maps or globes of the Cabots, it is impossible for us to tell precisely what was delineated upon them, or how much of Cosa's coast-line was copied from them; but from whatever source this line was drawn, it must be evident that it was supposed by Cosa to be the eastern coast of Asia. Cosa, so far as is observed from the fac-simile of his map, — which is a map of the world, — drew no east coast of Asia at all, unless this be iti (See Stevens's Notes as above, pp. 14, 17 ; Cf. Kohl, PP- H5. I53> IS3-) I have already said that the discoveries of the English on Cosa's map were noted on the northern portion of the east coast of the conti nent, and if confined, as they appear to be, to that region, we have no right to assert that the remaining portion of the east coast-line was supplied from the Cabots, but rather that it was taken from well-known existing representations of the east coast of Asia. The map and globe of the Cabots, already referred to, had laid down upon them the results of their experience on their first voyage, the voyage of discovery, in 1497. Of the results of the voyage of 1498, with which Sebastian Cabot is now more particularly associated, we know but little. Accounts narra ted by others, but originally proceeding many years after the event from Sebastian Cabot him self, of a voyage to the new-found lands, have been supposed by modern writers to refer more particularly to this voyage ; and these accounts, as we shall see further on, speak of a run down the coast to a considerable extent. That the Cabots, or Sebastian Cabot, should have pre pared maps of the second voyage at the time of its occurrence, as well as of the voyage of dis covery, is in every respect probable. But all RUYSCH'S MAP, 1508. U, 3. THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. I now ask the reader to follow me down through the sixteenth century, it" no further, and examine what notices of the Cabots and their voyages we can find in the historical literature of this period; and then to examine what has recently come to light. these early maps are lost. Perhaps they are yet slumbering in some dusty archive. [The Editor cannot derive from the reasons expressed by Stevens (Hist, and Geog. Notes, p. 15) that the coast where the legend is put, repre sents the north shore of the Gulf of St. Law rence ; for it is not easy to account for the absence of the characteristics of a gulf, if "mar," unaccompanied by " oceanus," signifies, as Ste vens holds, an enclosed sea; and if so, why is the genuine gulf between Cuba and the Asian coast called " mar oceanus " ? — Ed.] Cosa's map not having been engraved, or to any extent copied, exercised but little influence on the cartography of the period, and although the in formation relating to the English discoveries depicted upon it could have come from no other source than the Cabots themselves, their names were not inscribed upon the map; neither was the legend already quoted copied upon any one of the maps, relating to the new-found lands, which soon followed. The enterprising Corte- reals, who are supposed to have seen Cabot's or Cosa's map, soon spread their sails for the West, and the maps of their discoveries, in the regions visited by them, contained a record of their own name, or inscriptions which have perpetuated the memory of their exploits. (See vol. iv. of the present work.) Not so with the Cabots unless we should adopt the improbable state ment of Peter Martyr, in 151 5, that Sebastian Cabot gave the name Baccalaos to those lands because of the multitude of big fishes which he saw there, and to which the natives gave that name. This subject is considered in a later note. Another important map will be briefly re ferred to here, as it may possibly have some connection with the Cabots, — that of John Ruysch, published in the Ptolemy of 1508, at Rome. It is the first engraved map with the discoveries of the New World delineated upon it. [There are accounts of this map (which measures twenty-one and a quarter by sixteen inches) in Harrisse's Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, p. 108; in the Catalogue of the John Carter-Brown Library, i. p. 39; in Henry Stevens's Bibliotheca Geographica, No. 3058 ; and reproductions are given in Humboldt's Examen Critique, v., in his essay on the earliest maps appended to Ghilla ny's Martin Behaim ; in Stevens's Historical and Geographical Notes, pi. 2 (cf. Historical Maga zine, August, 1869, P- I07b i« Santarem's Atlas compost de mappemondes depuis le ifi jusqu' au xvii= siicles ; in Lelewel's Moyen Age ; in Judge Daly's Early History of Cartography, p. 32 (much reduced) ; and a section is given in Kohl's Dis- VOL. III. — 2, covery of Maine, p. 156. A copy of the original is in the Sumner Collection in Harvard College Library, and has been used for the fac-simile herewith given. — Ed.] A northeastern coast similar to that on the Cosa map is drawn, but there is no record on it that the English had visited it, and " Cabo de Portogesi" takes the place of " Cavo de Ynglaterra," on the point of what is now called Cape Race. Concerning John Ruysch, the maker of the map, who was a German geographer, Kunstmann (Die Ent- deckung Amerikas, p. 137) says that he accom panied some exploring expeditions undertaken from England to the north. Marcus Beneven- tanus, an Italian monk, who edited this edition of Ptolemy, and included in it " A new Description of the World, and the new Navigation of the Ocean from Lisbon to India," says : " But John Ruysch of Germany, in my judgment a most exact geographer, and a most painstaking one in delineating the globe, to whose aid in this little work I am indebted, has told me that he sailed from the South of England, and penetrated as far as the fifty-third degree of north latitude, and on that parallel he sailed west toward the shores of the East, bearing a little northward (per anglmn noctis), and observed many islands, the description of which I have given below." Mr. Henry Stevens, from whom I have taken this extract, thinks that Ruysch may have sailed with the Cabots to the new-found islands. We know that among the crew one was a Burgun- dian and one a Genoese. Beneventanus professed to know of the discoveries of the English as well as of those of the Spaniards and Portu guese : "Columbi et Lusitanorum atque Britan- norum quos Anglos nunc dicimus." (Stevens's Hist, and Geog. Notes, p. 32; Biddle, p. 179.) In his Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, p. 1 79, Mr. Biddle calls attention to a remarkable inscrip tion on this map, placed far at the north, some twenty degrees above " I. Baccalauras," namely, " Hie compassus navium non tenet nee naves quae ferrum tenent revertere valent" ("Here the ship's compass loses its property, and no vessel with iron on board is able to get away "). Mr. Biddle cites this inscription as showing the terror which this phenomenon of the variation of the magnetic needle, particularly noticed by Cabot, had excited. (See Humboldt's Examen Crit. iii. 31, et seq. ; Chytrceus, Variorum in Europa Itiiierum Delicto; published at Herborn, in Nassau, 1594, pp. 791, 792.) Columbus had noticed the declination of the magnetic needle in his first voyage. All these places in the new-found lands, — Terre Neuve, Baccalaos, Labrador, etc., — named IO NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. John Cabot had died when his son Sebastian in 1512, three years after the death of Henry VII., left England and entered into the service of the King of Spain, who gave him the title of Captain, and a liberal allowance, directing that he should reside at Seville to await orders. He there became an intimate friend of the famous Peter Martyr, the author of the Decades of the New World, or De Orbe Novo, and a volume of letters entitled Opus Epistolarum, etc., a writer too well known to need further introduction here. Through Martyr, for the first time, there was printed in 1516 an account of the voyage of the Cabots. He published in that year at Alcala (Complutum), in Spain, the first three by European visitors to these shores, were sup posed to be sections and projections of the Old World, and to belong to the map of Asia ; and this continued to be the opinion of navigators and cartographers, advancing and receding in their views, for a number of years afterward. [Johannes Myritius in his Opusculum Geogra- phicum, published at Ingoldstadt in 1590, is ac counted one of the last to hold to this view. Carter-Brown Catalogue, i. 314. After the dis covery by Balboa in 1513 of the South Sea, the new cartographical knowledge took two — in the main — distinct phases, both of which recog nized South America as an independent conti nental region, sometimes joined and sometimes disjoined from the northern continent; while in one, North America remained a prolongation of Asia, as in the map of Orontius Finaeus, and in the other it presented a barrier to western sail ing except by a northern circuit. An oceanic passage, which seemed to make an island of Baccalaos, or the Cabot region, nearly in its right latitude and longitude, laid New England, and much more, beneath the sea. The earliest specimen of this notion we find in the Polish Ptolemy of 1512, in what is known as the Stob- nicza map, one of the evidences that on the Continent the belief did not prevail that the Cabots had coursed south along a continental shore. It was a year before Balboa discovered the Pacific that this map was published at Cra cow ; and we are forced to believe that divination, or more credible report, had told John de Stob- nicza what was beyond the land which the Span iards were searching. The map is striking, and, singular to say, it has not been long known. The only copy known of the little book of less than fifty leaves, which contains it, was printed at Cracow without date as Introductio in Ptholo- mei Cosmographiam, and is in the Imperial Li brary at Vienna ; and though there are other copies known with dates (151 2), they all lack the maps, there being two sheets, one of the Old World, the other of the New, including in this latter designation the eastern shore of Asia, which is omitted in the fac-simile given herewith. A full-size fac-simile of the New World was made by Muller of Amsterdam (five copies only at twenty-five florins), and one is also given in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, i. 53. We note but a very few other copies, all however, except one, without the map. One is in the great library at Munich. A second (forty-three leaves and dated 1512) was sold by Otto Harrassowitz, a dealer of Leipsic, in 1873, to Muller of Am sterdam (we suppose it to be the copy described in the latter's Boohs on America, iii. 163, which was sold for 240 florins), from whom it passed into the Carter-Brown Library in Providence. Harrisse, Bib. Amer. Vet., no. 69, says there are two copies at Vienna, one in the Imperial Li brary (which has the map, a wood-cut), and the other in the City Library, both without date. One or both of these copies are said to have forty-two leaves, — Kunstmann, Die Entdeckung Amerikas, p. 130. A fifth was advertised in 1876 by Harrassowitz, Catalogue no. 29, as con taining forty-six leaves, dated 151 2, but without the map, and priced at 500 marks. In the same dealer's Catalogue 110. 61, book-number 56, a copy of forty-six leaves is dated 151 1, and priced 400 marks, which is perhaps the same copy with a corrected description. See also Panzer, Annates Typographic)', vi. 454. From this it would appear, as from slight changes said to be in the text, that there were three separate issues and perhaps editions about 1511-12. Mr. Henry C. Murphy's copy of 1513 has no map. A second edition was printed in Cracow in 1519, but without the map, — Carter-Brown Catalogue, no. 60 ; Harrisse, Bib. Amer. Vet. no. 95. The Finaeus map, above referred to, was a heart- shaped projection of the earth, which appeared in Grynaeus's Arovus Orbis, in the edition of Paris, 1532. A fac-simile of it has been pub lished by Muller, of Amsterdam, and in Stevens's Notes, pi. 4. America occupies the extreme edge of the plate, and is greatly distorted by the method of projecting. Mr. Brevoort reduced the lines to Mercator's projection for Stevens's Historical and Geographical Notes, 1869, pi. 3; and a fac-simile of this reduction, which shows also the true Asian coast-line in its right longi tude, and curiously resembling the American (Asian) coast of the map, is given herewith. See also Stevens's Bibliotheca Geographica, p. 124; Carter-Brown Catalogue, i. 104; Harrisse, Biblio- graphia Americana vet. pp. 294, 297. There are copies of the map also found in the 1540 editions of Pomponius Mela, and in the Geografia of La- freri and others, published at Rome, 1554-72. — Ed.] THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. II 53oBWo « c%oaw2 oH 0W O Z>aw « O too -1 o w gE mDO o u. o 12 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. of his Decades, addressed to Pope Leo X., the second and third of which Decades had been written in 1514 and 1515.1 In the sixth chapter of the third Decade —of which we in carum pebgo tantam reperit magnorum quorundam pif* cium:tinnosemulantium:ficiiocatorumabindigcnis:multitudinem:ut ctiam illi naui floaret)BC gia in terdum detardarent. Earum regionu homines pellibus tantum coopcrtos reperie caiiaoa. batirationishaudquacfexpertcs.Vrforuminefferegionibuscopiam ingentem refert peilib* uc qui &" ipfi pifcibus lie icantur .Inter denfa nanegpifcium illorurn agmina fefe immergut mi' vrfi: & fingulos finguli complexosrnn guibnsqs inter fquamat immiffis injterram raptat &commcduut:proptereamininienoxioshominibasvrfosecait.Orichalcii.5LpJxrisq) . . locisfeBidifreapadincolasprxdicant.EamUfarenihabea dornf cabotam ipfum cVcon* clb*uff^ tubernaleminteldamruocatusnacfexbritanniaaregenoftrocatholicopoftenrricinia iov is britanix regis mortem concorialls nofter effcexpeftat c£ indies ut nauigt'a fibi pare PETER MARTYR, 1516. 1 6 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. A map of the world was composed in 1529 by Diego Ribero,a very able cosmographer and map-maker of Spain in the early part of the sixteenth century. It is a very interest ing map, but is so well known to geographers that I need give no particular description of it here. The northern part of our coast, delineated upon it, is supposed to have been drawn from the explorations and reports of Gomez made in 1525. It was copied and printed, in its general features only, in 1534, at Venice. A superior copy in fac-simile of the original map was published by Dr. Kohl in i860, at Weimar, in his Die beiden ^Eltesten General- Karten iion Amerika.1 On this map an inscription, of which the fol- A new interlude and a mery of the nature of the iiif elements declaryinge many proper poynts of phylosophy naturall and of dyvers straunge landys and of dyvers straunge effects and causis, etc. Dr. Dibdin, in his Typogr. Ant., iii. 105, inserts it among the works from Rastell's press, and in a manuscript note at the beginning of the copy in the British Museum, it is said to have been printed by him in 1519. This copy, the only one known, formerly belonged to Garrick. I saw it in London in 1866, and collated it with the brief extracts in Collier. It is imperfect; and, as the colophon is wanting, the imprint, in cluding date, is gone. Different years have been assigned to the book according as the reader has interpreted the historical references in it. The citations from the "Interlude" which fol low are taken from the publications of the Percy Society, vol. xxii. issued in 1848. Among the characters is one Experyens (Experience), who represents a practical navigator who had been a great traveller : — " Right farr, Syr, I have ridden and gone, And seen straunge thynges many one In AfErick, Europe, and Ynde ; Both est and west I have ben farr. North also, and seen the sowth sterr Bothe by see and lande. And, apparently pointing to a map, Experience proceeds : — "There lyeth Iselonde where men do fyshe, But beyonde that so colde it is No man may there abyde. This see is called the Great Occyan ; So great it is that never man Coulde tell it sith the worlde began Tyll nowe within this xx. yere, Westewarde be founde new landes That we never harde tell of before this By wrytynge nor other meanys. Yet many nowe have ben there ; And that contrey is so large of rome, Muche lenger then all Crestendome, Without fable or gyle ; For dyvers maryners had it tryed, And sayled streyght by the coste syde Above V. thousande myle ! But what commodytes be wythin, No man can tell nor well imagin. But yet not long ago Some men of this contrey went, By the Kynge's noble consent, It for to search to that entent, And coude not be brought thereto ; But they that were they venteres Have cause to curse their maryners, Fals of promys, and dissemblers, That falsly them betrayed, Which wold take no paine to sail farther Than their own lyst and pleasure : Wherfor that vyage, and dyvers other Such kaytyffes have destroyed. O what a thinge had be than Yf that they that be Englyschemen Myght have ben furst of all That there shulde have take possessyon, And made furst buyldynge and habytacion, A memory perp'etuall ! And also what an honorable thynge Bothe to the realme, and to the Kynge, To have had his domynyon extendynge There into so farr a grounde, Whiche the noble Kynge of late memory, The most wyse prynce, the VII. Herry, Cansyd furst for to be founde, . . ." Percy, in his essay on the Origin of the Eng ¦ lish Stage, 1767, supposed this play to have been written about the year 1510, from the follow ing lines which he referred to Columbus : — "... Within this xx. yeer Westewarde be founde new landes." But Columbus is not named in the play, and the finding of America is attributed to Americus Vespucius, whose earliest alleged voyage was in 1497: — " But this newe lands founde lately, Ben callyd America, bycause only Americus dyd furst them fynde." The date ascribed to the play by the writer of the memorandum in it, 1519, would seem to be not far from the truth. But the verses which speak of the discovery made for the late king, Henry VII., principally interest us here. They would seem to refer to the Cabots, who made the only authentic Western discovery for England in that reign. The whole poem has been re printed by the Percy Society. See Winsor's Halliwelliana, p. 8, and references there. Mr. J. F. Nicholls, in his Life of Sebastian Cabot, Lon don, 1869, p. 91, prints these lines, and thinks " that the Experyens herein depicted was none other than Sebastian Cabot himself." 1 [A sketch of a portion of the North Amer ican coast is given in another chapter. It was reproduced in Sprengel's translation of Muiioz's Geschichte der neuen Welt, Weimar, 1795, and separately in his Ueber J. Ribero's dlteste welt- charte, size 50 by 65 centimetres, and shows the coast from Labrador to Magellan's Straits. Cf. THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. jy ¦ * --_ ^ w ^ ¦ " r .=¦ = s r= — -^ci-=-.r^-^a Ifoppv® - --.:¦---: . ¦ ^rb^$init^ Ota^-ni THORNE'S MAP, 1527. VOL. III. — 3. 1 8 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. lowinf is an English version, is placed over the territory inscribed Tierra del Labrador : " This country the English discovered, but there is nothing useful in it." See an abridged section of the map and a description of it in Kohl's Doc. Hist, of Maine, i. 299-307. J In 1530, four years after Martyr's death, there was published at Alcala (Complutum), in Spain, his eight Decades, De Orbe Novo, which included the three first published in 1516, in the last of which, the third, appeared the notice of Sebastian Cabot cited above. And it may be added here that the three Decades, including the De nuper . . . repertis in sults, etc., or abridgment, so called, of the fourth Decade, printed at Basel in 1521, were reprinted together in that city in 1533. Of later editions there will be occasion to say something farther on. Martyr's notice of Cabot was the earliest extant, and the republi cation of these Decades, at different places, served to keep alive the important fact of the discovery of North America under the English flag. In some of these later Decades, written in 1524 and 1525, references will be found to Sebastian Cabot and to his employ ment in Spain. There was published in Latin at Argentoratum (Strasbourg), in 1532, by James Ziegler, — a Bavarian theologian, who cultivated mathematics and cosmography with success, — a book relating in part to the northern regions. Under the head of " Gron- land " the author quotes Peter Martyr's account of Sebastian Cabot's voyage : — " Peter Martyr of Angleria writeth in his Decades of the Spanish navigations, that Sebastian Cabot,2 sailing from England continually towards the north, followed that course so far that he chanced upon great flakes of ice in the month of July; and diverting from thence he followed the coast by the shore, bending toward the south until he came to the clime of the island of Hispan- iola above Cuba, an Island of the Cannibals. Which narration hath given me occasion to extend Gronland beyond the promontory or cape of Huitsarch to the continent or firm land of Lapponia above the castle of Wardhus ; which thing I did the rather for that the reverend Archbishop of Nidrosia constantly affirmed that the sea bendeth there into the form of a crooked elbow." This writer evidently supposed that Cabot sailed along the east coast of Greenland, and the inference he drew from Cabot's experience, as related by Martyr, confirmed his belief Humboldt's Examen Critique, iii. 184. It is also Christian name probably arose from a misiread- given in Lelewel's Atlas; in Murphy's Verraz- ing of Martyr's language in Dec. iii. lib. 6: "Scru- zano, p. 129; and in De Costa's Verrazano the tatus est eas Sebastianus quidam Cabotus." Eden Explorer, p. 43. The original is at Weimar, did not hesitate to substitute Sebastian for An- with a replica at Rome.— Ed.] thony. As a mystification concerning the name 1 I might mention here an interesting map Antoninum (or Anthony) Cabot, I will add that composed by the English merchant, Robert Mr. Brevoort has called my attention to the fol- Thorne, while residing in Seville in Spain, in lowing entry in Letters and Papers, Foreign and 1527, and sent, with a long discourse on cos- Domestic, 'Henry VIII., vol. i. pt. 1, p. 939, mography, to Dr. Ley, English ambassador to doc. 5639, Nov. 27, 1514: "Patent denization to Charles V. The map is very rude, and was first Anthony Chabo, surgeon, native of Savoy," with published with the discourse by Hakluyt in his another entry showing that in 151 2 an annuity little quarto in 1582. Along the line of the coast of twenty pounds was granted to him ; and Mr. of Labrador is a Latin inscription of which the Brevoort asks the question if Anthony could following is the English reading : " This land was have been another son of Jean Cabot, arriving first discovered by the English." Thorne was in England later ; and also whether the Cabots very urgent — as well in his letter to Dr. Ley as might not have come originally from Savoy? in a letter to the king, Henry VIII, also pub- [Ziegler's title reads : Syria, Palestina, Arabia, lished by Hakluyt — that the English should en- JEgypttis, Schondia, Holmia, — the section on gage in those maritime discoveries to the west Schondia, as he calls the north, takes folios 85- which the Spaniards and the Portuguese were 138; and the last of the eight maps in the book monopolizing. is 0f Schondia. See Harrisse's Biblio. Amer. 2 In Ziegler's original work he begins this Vetus, no. 170; F. Muller's Catalogue, 1877, sentence thus : " Petrus Martyr mediolanensis no. 3595. The Schondia section was reprinted in hispanicis navigationibus scribit, Antoninum in Krantzius's Regnorum Aquilonarium, etc, quendam Cabotum solventem a Britannia," etc. Frankfort, 1583. F. Muller's Catalogue, 1872! This clerical or typographical error as to Cabot's no. 844. — Ed.1 THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. 19 that that country joined on to Lappona (Lapland), — an old notion which lasted down to the time of Willoughby, — making "one continent;" and so he represented it on his map no. 8, published in his book.1 He places " Terra Bacallaos '' on the east coast of "Gronland." He believed that Cabot's falling in with ice proved " that he sailed not by the main sea, but in places near unto the land, comprehending and embracing the sea in the form of a gulf." I have copied this from Eden's English version of Ziegler (Decades, fol. 268), in the margin of which at this place Eden says, " Cabot told me that this ice is of fresh water, and not of the sea." - There was published at Venice in 1534, in Italian, a volume in three parts; the firstl of which was entitled, Summario de la generate historia de I'indie occidenlali cavato da libri scritti dal signor don Pietro Martyre del consiglio delle indie delta maesta de I'im- peradore, et da molte altre particulari relationi? This, as will be seen, purports to be a summary drawn from Peter Martyr and I other sources, — "from many other private accounts." The basis of the work is Martyr's i first three Decades, published together in Latin in 1516, the original arrangement of the author being entirely disregarded, many facts omitted, and new statements introduced for which no authority is given. By virtue of the concluding words of the quoted title, the translator or compiler appears to claim the privilege of taking the utmost liberty with the text of Martyr. For the well-known passage in the sixth chapter of the third Decade, where Martyr says that Sebastian Cabot " sed a parentibus in Britaniam insulam tenden- tibus, uti moris est Venetorum : qui commercii causa ten-arum omnium sunt hospites trans- portatus pene infans" ("whom being yet but in manner an infant, his parents carried with them into England, having occasion to resort thither for trade of merchandise, as is the manner of the Venetians to leave no part of the world unsearched to obtain riches "), the Italian translator has substituted, "Costui essendo piccolo fu menato da suo padre in Inghilterra, da poi la morte del quale trouandosi ricchissimo, et di grande animo, delibero si come hauea fatto Christoforo Colombo voler anchor lui scoprire qualche nuoua parte del modo," etc. (" He being a little boy was taken by his father into England, after whose death, finding himself very rich and of great ambition, he resolved to discover some new part of the world as Columbus had done,"). M. D'Avezac has given some facts which show that the editor of this Italian version of Peter Martyr, as he calls this work, was Ramusio, the celebrated editor of the Navigationi et , Viaggi,1 etc., and this work is introduced into the third volume of that publication, twenty- one years later. Mr. Brevoort has also called my attention to the fact that the woodcut of " Isola Spagnuola," used in the early work, was introduced into the later one, which is confirmatory of the opinion that Ramusio was at least the editor of the Summario of 1534.5 Cabot we know was, during his residence in Spain, a correspondent of Ramusio, — at least, the latter speaks once of Cabot's having written to him, and we shall see farther on that they were not strangers to each other, — and it is possible that this modification of Peter Martyr's language was authorized by him. It is here stated, however, that Cabot reached only 55° north, while in the prefatory Discorso to his third volume the editor says that Cabot wrote to him many years before that he reached the latitude of 67 degrees and a half, and no explanation is given as to whether the reference is to the same voyage. A fair inference from the passage above cited from the Italian Summario would be that 1 Sebastian Cabot planned the voyage of discovery after his father's death, which we know 1 [It is also so drawn in Ruscelli's map of Amer. Vetus, pp. 290, 291, 350, and the Carter- 1544. — Ed.] Brown Catalogue, pp. 106, 120, where will be 2 Ziegler's book is rare and curious; he found a notice of Ziegler. Biddle, p. 31. was a geographer of great repute. Such books s Carter-Brown Catalogue, p. no. often serve to perpetuate references to more 4 See Annie Veritable de la Naissance de important works, and to show the erroneous geo- Christophe Colomb, p. 10, u. 8. graphical opinions of the period. A second edi- 5 See also Relationi del S. Pietro Martira tion, under a different title, was published at the Milanese, Delia cose notabili delta provincia dell' same place in 1536. See Harrisse's Biblio. Egitto, etc, by Carlo Passi, Venetia, 1564. 20 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. was not true ; as it was equally untrue that the death of his father made him very rich, for the Italian envoy tells us that John Cabot was poor. Indeed, the whole language of the passage relating to Sebastian Cabot is mythical and untrustworthy, whoever may have inspired it.1 I now come to a map of Sebastian Cabot, bearing date 1544, as the year of its compo sition, a copy of which was discovered in Germany in 1843, by Von Martius, in the house of a Bavarian curate, and deposited in the following year in the National Library in Paris. It has been described at some length by M. D'Avezac, in the Bttlletin de la Societe de Geographie, 4 ser. xiv. 268-270, 1857. It is a large elliptical mappe monde, engraved on metal, with geographical delineations drawn upon it down to the time it was made. I saw the map in Paris in 1866. On its sides are two tables : the first, on the left, inscribed at the head "Tabula Prima;" and that on the right, "Tabula Secunda." On these tables are seventeen legends, or inscriptions, in duplicate ; that is to say, in Spanish and in Latin, the latter supposed to be a translation of the former, —each Latin legend immedi ately following the Spanish original and bearing the same number.2 After the seventeen legends in Spanish and in Latin, we come to a title or heading : " Plinio en el secund libro capitulo lxxix., escriue " (" Pliny, in the second book, chapter 79, writes "). Then follows an inscription in Spanish, no. 18, from Pliny's Natural History, cap. lxvii., the chapter given above being an error. Four brief inscriptions, also in Spanish, numbered 19 to 22, relating to the natural productions of islands in the eastern seas, taken from other authors, complete the list. So there are twenty-two Spanish inscriptions or legends on the map, — ten on the first table and twelve on the second, — the last five of which have no Latin exemplaires ; and there are no Latin inscriptions without the same text in Spanish immediately preceding. There are no headings prefixed to the inscriptions, except the 1st, the 17th, and 18th. The first inscription, relating to the discovery of the New World by Columbus, has this title, beneath Tabula Prima, " del almir ¦ante.'' The 17th — a long inscription — has this title : Retulo, del auctor conpertas razones de la variation que haze it aguia del marear con la estrella del Norte (" A discourse of the author of the map, giving certain reasons for the variation of the magnetic needle in reference to the North Star"). It is also repeated in Latin over the version of the inscription in that language. The title to the 18th inscrip tion, if it may be called a title, has already been given. The 17th inscription begins as follows: "Sebastian Caboto, capitan y piloto mayor de la S. c. c. m. del Imperador don Carlos quinto deste nombre, y Rey nuestro sennor hizo este figura extenda en piano, anno del nascim0 de nro Salvador Iesu Christo de 1 In a recent letter from Mr. J. Carson Bre- three Decades (the last book not having yet voort, the distinguished bibliographer and his- been written) and sent the MS. to a friend in torical scholar, of Brooklyn, N. Y, — who has Italy, where it slumbered until 1534, when it kindly communicated for my use his abundant fell into the hands of Ramusio, who committed materials relating to the Cabots, and has laid it to the press. This is a curious question in me under great obligations for aid in preparing bibliography. this paper, — he says he has been collating the It should be added here that the statements of first part of the Summario of 1534 with the Martyr included in the Latin Decades of 1516 Latin Decades of Peter Martyr, and he finds (afterward published in the entire work of 1530) them to differ in a way that no mere transla- are so often referred to by the author, in the tor would have ventured to effect ; that in one course of his correspondence, that we are bound instance two books of the Decades are con- to accept that edition as the genuine work. It densed into a few lines, and the whole worked was published during his lifetime, and received over as an author only could do it. The Ital- his imprimatur. ian Summary closes at the end of the ninth 2 The figures of men and animals on the book of the third Decade. He thinks that Ra- map are colored. I have recently received from musio, with the edition of 1516 before him, my friend M. Letort, of the National Library would not have omitted the tenth book. Mr. in Paris, a more particular description of the Brevoort therefore is led to believe that Mar- legends of this map than has hitherto ,been tyr himself rewrote in 1515, in Italian, the published. THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. 21 MDXLIIII. annos, tirada por grados de latitud y longitud con sus vientos como carta de marear, imitando en parte al Ptolomeo, y en parte alos modernos descobridores, asi Espa- noles como Portugueses, y parte por su padre, y por el descubierto, por donde, podras navegar como por carta de marear, teniendo respecto a luariagion que haze el aguia," etc. (" Sebastian Cabot, captain and pilot-major of his sacred imperial majesty, the emperor Don Carlos, the fifth of this name, and the king our lord, made this figure extended on a plane surface, in the year of the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, 1544, having drawn it by degrees of latitude and longitude, with the winds, as a sailing chart, following partly Ptolemy and partly the modern discoveries, Spanish and Portuguese, and partly the dis covery made by his father and himself: by it you may sail as by a sea-chart, having regard to the variation of the needle," etc.). Then follows a discussion relating to the variation of the magnetic needle, which Cabot claims first to have noticed.1 In the inscription, No. 8, which treats of Newfoundland, it says : " This country was discovered by John Cabot, a Venetian, and Sebastian Cabot, his son, in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ, MCCCCXCIV. [1494] on the 24th of June, in the morning, which country they called 'primum visam' ; and a large island adjacent to it they named the island of St. John, because they discovered it on the same day." 2 A fac-simile of this map was published in Paris by M. Jomard, in Plate XX. of his Monuments de la Gdographie (begun in 1842, and issued during several years following down to 1862), but without the legends on its sides, which unquestionably belong to the map itself ; for those which, on account of their length, are not included within the interior of the map, are attached to it by proper references. M. Jomard promised a separate vol ume of "texte explicatif," but death prevented the accomplishment of his purpose.8 1 It is supposed that a new edition of this map was published in 1 549, the year after Sebastian Cabot returned to England. The only evidence of this is contained in a thick duodecimo volume first published in 1594, at Herborn, in Nassau, edited by Nathan Chytraeus, entitled Variorum in Europa Itinerum Delicto; — a' work consisting of monumental and other inscriptions, antique legends, and curious bits of antiquity in prose and verse, picked up by the diligent compiler in almost every country in Europe. He was in England in 1565 ; and apparently at Oxford he saw a document, " a geographical table," under which he found several inscriptions in not very elegant Latin, which he copied and printed in his volume, filling twenty-two pages of the book. They are wholly in Latin, and correspond sub stantially with the Latin inscriptions on the Paris map described above. There is this difference. The inscriptions here are but nine teen in number, whereas on the Paris map there are twenty-two, five of them in Spanish only. No. xviii, of Chytraeus, is in the body only of the map, and in Spanish ; and No. xix. appears only in Spanish. In Chytraeus each inscription has a title prefixed, wanting, as a rule, on the Paris map. There are some verbal variations in the text, owing probably to the contingencies of transcription and of printing. In the legend, No. xvii, which has the title, " Inscriptio sev titulus Auctoris," the date 1549 is inserted as the year in which the map to which the inscrip tions belonged was composed, instead of 1544, as in the Paris map. 2 I copy here this legend entire, in the orig inal Spanish as on the Paris map : — * " No. 8. Esta tierra fue descubierta por loan Caboto Veneciano, y Sebastian Caboto su hijo, anno del nascimiento denuestro Saluador Iesu Christo de M.CCCC.XCIIII. * ueinte y quarto de Juniopor la mannana, a la qual pusieron nobre prima tierra uista, y a una isla grade que esta par la dha tierra, le pusieron nobre sant loan, por auer sido descubierta el mismo dia lagente della andan uestidos de- pieles de animales, usan en sus guerras arcos, y flechas, lancas, y dardos, y unas porras de palo, y hondas. Es tierra muy steril, ay enella muchos orsos plancos, y cieruos muy grades como cauallos, y otras muchas animales, y semeiantemete ay pescado infinite, sollos, salmoes, len- guados, muy grandes de uara enlargo y otras muchas diver- sidades de pescados, y la mayor multitud dellos se dizen baccallaos, y asi mismo ay en la dha tierra Halcones prietos como cueruos Aquillas, Perdices, Pardillas, y otras muchas aues de diuersas maneras." In the Latin inscription we read that the dis covery was made " hora 5, sub diluculo ; " that is, at the hour of five, at daybreak. The Spanish simply says that the discovery was made in the morning. 3 [We give reduced a part of the North Amer ican coast. Other representations will be found in Stevens's Hist, and Geog. Notes, pi. 4 ; Kohl's Discovery of Maine, p; 358 ; Jurien de la Gra- viere's Les Marins du XV' et du XVIs siicle, Paris, 1879, with an essay on the map, — papers originally printed in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1876 ; Nicholl's Life of S. Cabot, but inaccurate in the names ; Hist. Mag., March, 1868, in con nection with Mr. Brevoort's paper ; F. Kidder's Discovery of North America by John Cabot ; Bry ant and Gay's United States, i. 193. Also in 22 NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. wQS O S £> O o fe wIBH o2 THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS. 23 If this map, with the date of its composition, is authentic, it is the first time the name of John Cabot has been introduced to our notice in any printed document, in connection with the discovery of North America. Here the name is brought in jointly with that of Sebastian Cabot, on the authority apparently of Sebastian himself. He is said to be the maker of the map, and if he did not write the legends on its sides he may be supposed not to have been ignorant of their having been placed there. As to Legend No. 8, copied above, who but Sebastian Cabot would know the facts embodied in it, — namely, that the discovery was made by both the father and the son, on the 24th of June, about five o'clock in the morning; that the land was called prima vista, or its equivalent, and that the island near by was called St. John, as the discovery was made on St. John's Day ? Whether or not Sebastian Cabot's statement is to be implicitly relied on, in associating his own name with his father's in the voyage of discovery, in view of the evidence which has recently come to light, the legend itself must have proceeded from him. Some additional informa tion in the latter part of the inscription, relating to the native inhabitants, and the pro ductions of the country, may have been gathered in the voyage of the following year. Sebastian Cabot, without doubt, was in possession of his father's maps, on which would be inscribed by John Cabot himself the day on which the discovery was made. Whatever opinions, therefore, historical scholars may entertain as to Sebastian Cabot's connection with this map in its present form, or with the inscriptions upon it as a whole, . all must admit that the statements embodied in No. 8, and, it may be added, in No. 17, could have been communicated by no one but Sebastian Cabot himself. The only alterna tive is that they are a base fabrication by a stranger. Moreover, this very map itself, or a map with these legends upon it, as we shall see farther on, was in the possession of Richard Eden, or was accessible to him ; and one of its long inscriptions was translated into Eng lish, and printed in his Decades, in 1555, as from " Cabot's own card," — and this at a time when Cabot was living in London, and apparently on terms of intimacy with Eden. Le gend No. 8 contains an important statement which is confirmed by evidence recently come to light, namely, the fact of John Cabot's agency in the discovery of North America ; and, although the name of the son is here associated with the father, it is a positive relief to find an acknowledgment from Sebastian himself of a truth that was to receive, before the close of the century, important support from the publication of the Letters Patent from the archives of the State. And this should serve to modify our estimate of the authenticity of reports purporting to come from Sebastian, in which the father is wholly ignored, and the son .jilone is represented as the hero. The long inscription, No. 17, contains an honorable mention of his father, as we have already seen ; and in the Latin duplicate, the language in the passage which I have given in English will be seen to be even more emphatic than is expressed in the Spanish text. Indeed, in several instances in the Latin, though gener ally following the Spanish, so far as I have had an opportunity of observing, there are some statements of fact not to be found in the Spanish.1 The passage already cited con- Augusto Zeri's Giovanni e. Sebastiano Caboto, Es- before, takes with him to show to your Majesty two figures tratto dalla Rivista Marittima, Marzo, Roma, which are: a maPPe raonde divided by the equator, from _, , , r .1 • u i. which your Majesty can see the causes of the variation of the The whole of the map is given, but on a ,. , ., ... „ . 1 fc> > needle, and the reasons whv it moves at nnp timp tnwai-rlf: I8SI. 1 UC WI1U1C OX LUC XU*J, X.-, &XV^., 1XUU VX,x