& variationes acûs nautica crebro fieri cum Arcti obseruatione."

"Which," says Mr. Major, "I translate thus, without holding myself responsible for the bad construction of the language":

1

"Sebastian Cabot, captain and pilot of his Sacred Imperial Catholic Majesty the Emperor Charles, fifth of that name and King of Spain, put upon me the finishing hand, and, projecting me after this form, delineated me in a plane figure, in the year of redemption and of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1549; who has described me according to the latitude and longitude of degrees, the position of the winds, so learnedly and so faithfully in the fashion of a sailing chart, following the authority of the geographer Ptolemy and the belief of the more skilled Portuguese, and also from the experience and practice of long sea service of the most excellent John Cabot, a Venetian by nation, and of my author, Sebastian, his son, the most learned of all men in knowledge of the stars and the art of navigation, who have discovered a certain part of the globe for a long time hidden from our people. . . Sebastian Cabot, sailing into the western ocean, reached a certain sea and region where the lily of the compass needle pointed due north at one quarter north-north-east. For which reasons, and by the safest nautical experience, it is most clearly evident that defects and variations of the compass frequently occur with observation of the north."

1 The map seen by Kochhaff (ante, p. 263) was probably a re-issue of the map which was originally published in 1544. The inscription reads "plana figura me delineavit 1549." The inscription on the orginal issue is given at p. 261 (ante).

The date 1494 has been accepted by many persons as a true record of a voyage which was made in that year by John and Sebastian Cabot. But the best authorities are now agreed that there is an almost entire absence of evidence to support this theory, and that the error is due to a printer's slip in the numerals, which, instead of MCCCCXCIIII. (1494), should read MCCCCXCVII. (1497). M. d'Avezac is the most important writer who has taken this view. He says: "We know this time [1491], appositely, that there then commenced a series of consecutive explorations, which employed, each year, two, three, four caravels, proceeding from the port of Bristol to sail under the direction1 of John Cabot, the Genoese, for the discovery of the isle of Brésil and of the Seven Cities. This is what the Spanish ambassador, Pedro d'Ayala, sends officially to his Government in a despatch of the 25th of July 1498, on occasion of the departure of a great expedition confided to this Genoese Los de Bristol ha siete annos que cada anno han armado dos, tres, cuatro caravelas para ir à buscar la isla del Brasil, y las Siete Ciudades, con la fantasia deste Genovés.'

2

"At last, on the fourth voyage of this septennial series, in the month of June 1494, the search is no longer in vain in one of the legends accompanying the great elliptical Mappe-Monde, published in 1554 by Sebastian Cabot, then grand pilot of Spain, the following indisputable declaration is inscribed both

3

This, with all due deference to M. d'Avezac, is not a literal definition of the position which d'Ayala ascribes to John Cabot in connection with expeditions which sailed from Bristol prior to 1497. 2 According to the fancy of this Genoese.

This is the map which was found in 1843. There exists not a tittle of evidence to prove that it was published by Sebastian Cabot.

in Spanish and Latin, and is pointed out by an express reference [in the body of the map], for what relates to Tierra de los Bacallaos: This land was discovered by John Cabot, a Venetian, and Sebastian Cabot, his son, in the year of the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, MCCCCXCIIII (1494), the twenty-fourth day of June (at five o'clock) in the morning; to which land has been given the name of The land first seen and to a great island, which is very near the said land, the name of St. John has been given, on account of its having been discovered the same day.'" The writer goes on to say: "I assume it, then, as a fact to be hereafter uncontested, as I have always regarded it as incontestable, that the first discovery of Cabot was made on the 24th of June 1494. But, during the period of the successive attempts of this intrepid navigator to find a passage to the Indies by the west, the great fact of the Columbian discovery had been accomplished; and in its train had followed the promulgation of the papal bull, adjudging the New World to Spain; and, immediately after, the protestation of Portugal, and the establishment of a line of demarcation, and finally the Treaty of Tordesillas of 7th June 1494. Accordingly, when John Cabot had, in his turn, discovered new countries, he was obliged to acknowledge that it could appertain only to a sovereign to declare them his own, and to confer the dominium utile over them on the discoverer; and he had recourse to Henry VII., King of England, to escape from the exclusive pretensions of Spain and Portugal." Having presented this view of the case for perusal, it will be desirable to present other opinions on this so-called Cabot map.