New World to Castile and Leon, "the like of which was never done by any man in ancient or in later times."

Successive popes of Rome had already conceded to the Portuguese the undiscovered world from Cape Bojador in Africa easterly to the Indies. To prevent collision between Christian princes, on the fourth of May, 1493, Alexander VI. published a bull, in which he drew an imaginary line from the north pole to the south a hundred leagues west of the Azores, assigning to Spain all that lies to the west of that boundary, while all to the east of it was confirmed to Portugal.

The commerce of the middle ages, concentrated upon the Mediterranean Sea, had enriched the Italian republics, and had been chiefly engrossed by their citizens. After the fall of the Byzantine empire the Christian states desired to escape the necessity of strengthening the Ottoman power by the payment of tribute on all intercourse with the remoter east. Maritime enterprise, transferring its home to the borders of the Atlantic, set before itself as its great problem the discovery of a pathway by sea to the Indies; and England, which like Spain and Portugal looked out upon the ocean, became a competitor for the unknown world.

The wars of the houses of York and Lancaster had terminated with the intermarriage of the heirs of the two families; the spirit of commercial activity began to be successfully fostered; and the marts of England were frequented by Lombard adventurers. The fisheries of the north had long tempted the merchants of Bristol to an intercourse with Iceland; and had matured the nautical skill that could buffet the worst storms of the Atlantic. Nor is it impossible that some uncertain traditions respecting the remote discoveries which Icelanders had made in Greenland toward the north-west, "where the lands nearest meet," should have excited "firm and pregnant conjectures." The achievement of Columbus, revealing the wonderful truth of which the germ may have existed in the imagination of every thoughtful mariner, won the admiration which belonged to genius that seemed more divine than human; and "there was great talk of it in all the court of Henry VII." A feeling of disappointment remained, that a series of disasters had defeated the wish of the illustrious VOL. 1.-3

Genoese to make his voyage of essay under the flag of England. It was, therefore, not difficult for John Cabot, a denizen of Venice, residing at Bristol, to interest that politic king in plans for discovery. On the fifth of March, 1496, he obtained under the great seal a commission empowering himself and his three sons, or either of them, their heirs, or their deputies, to sail into the eastern, western, or northern sea with a fleet of five ships, at their own expense, in search of islands, provinces, or regions hitherto unseen by Christian people; to affix the banners of England on city, island, or continent; and, as vassals of the English crown, to possess and occupy the territories that might be found. It was further stipulated in this "most ancient American state paper of England," that the patentees should be strictly bound, on every return, to land at the port of Bristol, and to pay to the king one fifth part of their gains; while the exclusive right of frequenting all the countries that might be found was reserved to them and to their assigns, without limit of time.

Under this patent, which, at the first direction of English enterprise toward America, embodied the worst features of monopoly and commercial restriction, John Cabot, taking with him his son Sebastian, embarked in quest of new islands and a passage to Asia by the north-west. After sailing prosperously, as he reported, for seven hundred leagues, on the twenty-fourth day of June, 1497, early in the morning, almost fourteen months before Columbus on his third voyage came in sight of the main, and more than two years before Amerigo Vespucci sailed west of the Canaries, he discovered the western continent, probably in the latitude of about fifty-six degrees, among the dismal cliffs of Labrador. He ran along the coast for many leagues, it is said even for three hundred, and landed on what he considered to be the territory of the Grand Cham. But he encountered no human being, although there were marks that the region was inhabited. He planted on the land a large cross with the flag of England, and, from affection for the republic of Venice, he added the banner of St. Mark, which had never before been borne so far. On his homeward voyage he saw on his right hand two islands, which for want of provisions he could not stop to explore. After an absence

of three months the happy discoverer re-entered Bristol harbor, where due honors awaited him. The king gave him money, and encouraged him to continue his career. The people called him the great admiral; he dressed in silk; and the English, and even Venetians who chanced to be at Bristol, ran after him with such zeal that he could enlist for a new voyage as many as he pleased.

A second time Columbus had brought back tidings from the isles which to the end of his life he steadfastly believed to be the outposts of India. It appeared to be demonstrated that ships might pass by the west into those rich eastern realms where, according to the popular belief, the earth teemed with spices, and imperial palaces glittered with pearls and rubies, with diamonds and gold. On the third day of the month of February next after his return, "John Kaboto, Venician,” accordingly obtained a power to take up ships for another voyage, at the rates fixed for those employed in the service of the king, and once more to set sail with as many companions as would go with him of their own will. With this license every trace of John Cabot disappears. He may have died before the summer; but no one knows certainly the time or the place of his end, and it has not even been ascertained in what country this finder of a continent first saw the light.

His second son, Sebastian Cabot, probably a Venetian by birth, a cosmographer by profession, succeeded to the designs of his father. He reasoned justly, that, as the degrees of longitude decrease toward the north, the shortest route to China and Japan lies in the highest practicable latitude; and with youthful fervor he devoted himself to the experiment. In May, 1498, Columbus, radiant with a glory that shed a lustre over his misfortunes and griefs, calling on the Holy Trinity with vows, and seeing paradise in his dreams, embarked on his third voyage to discover the main land, and to be sent back in chains. In the early part of the same month Sebastian Cabot, then not much more than twenty-one years of age, chiefly at his own cost, led forth two ships and a large company of English volunteers, to find the north-west passage to Cathay and Japan. A few days after the English navigator had left the port of Bristol, Vasco da Gama, of Portugal, as

daring and almost as young, having turned the Cape of Good Hope, cleared the Straits of Mozambique, and sailed beyond Arabia Felix, came in sight of the mountains of Hindostan; and his happy crew, decking out his little fleet with flags, sounding trumpets, praising God, and full of festivity and gladness, steered into the harbor of Calicut. Meantime Cabot proceeded toward the north till icebergs compelled him to change his course. The coast to which he was now borne was unobstructed by frost. He saw there stags larger than those of England, and bears that plunged into the water to take fish with their claws. The fish swarmed in such shoals they seemed even to stay the speed of his vessels, so that he gave to the country the name of Bacallaos, a word of German origin, which still lingers on the eastern side of Newfoundland, and has passed into the language of the Italians, as well as the Portuguese and Spanish, to designate the cod. Coasting the shore, he found the natives of those regions clad in skins of beasts; but they were not without the faculty of reason, and in many places were acquainted with the use of copper. In the early part of his voyage he had been so far to the north that in the month of July the light of day was almost continuous; before he turned homeward, in the late autumn, he believed he had attained the latitude of the Straits of Gibraltar and the longitude of Cuba. A gentle westerly current appeared to prevail in the northern sea.

Such is the meagre account given by Sebastian Cabot, through his friend Peter Martyr, the historian of the ocean, of that great voyage which was undertaken by the authority of "the most wise" Prince Henry VII., and made known to England a country "much larger than Christendom."

Thus the year 1498 stands singularly famous in the annals of the sea. In May, Vasco da Gama reached Hindostan by way of the Cape of Good Hope; in August, Columbus discovered the firm land of South America and the river Oronoco, which seemed to him to flow from some large empire, or perhaps even from the terrestrial paradise itself; and, in the summer, Cabot, the youngest of them all, made known to the world the coast line of the present United States as far as the entrance to the Chesapeake. The fame of Columbus was em

balmed in the poetry of Tasso; Da Gama is the hero of the national epic of Portugal; but the elder Cabot was so little celebrated that even the reality of his voyage has been denied ; and Sebastian derived neither benefit nor immediate renown from his expedition. His main object had been the discovery of a north-western passage to Asia, and in this respect his voyage was a failure; while Da Gama was cried up by all the world for having found the way by the south-east. For the next half century it was hardly borne in mind that the Venetian and his son had, in two successive years, reached the continent of North America, before Columbus came upon the low coast of Guiana. But England acquired through their energy such a right to North America as this priority could confer. The successors of Henry VII. recognised the claims of Spain and Portugal only so far as they actually occupied the territories to which they laid pretension; and, at a later day, the English parliament and the English courts derided a title founded not upon occupancy, but upon the award of a Roman pontiff.

"Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit," were the words of Columbus, as on Ascension Day, 1506, he breathed his last. His great discovery was the triumph of free mind. In the year of his death, Copernicus, like him, emancipated from authority, attained the knowledge of the true theory of our solar system.

For nearly sixty years, during a period while marine adventure engaged the most intense public curiosity, Sebastian Cabot, from whom England derived a claim to our shores, was reverenced for his knowledge of cosmography and his skill in navigation. On the death of Henry VII. he was called out of England by the command of Ferdinand, the Catholic king of Castile, and was appointed one of the council for the New Indies, ever cherishing the hope to discover "that hidden secret of nature," the direct passage to Asia. In 1518 he was named Pilot Major of Spain, and no one could guide a ship to the Indies whom he had not first examined and approved. He attended the congress which in April, 1524, assembled at Badajoz to decide on the respective pretensions of Portugal and Spain to the islands of the Moluccas. A company having