A conspicuous place is, on many accounts, due to the testimony of Lord Bacon. Every student of English History is aware of the labour and research he expended on the History of Henry VII. He himself, in one of his letters, speaking of a subsequent tract, says, "I find Sir Robert Cotton, who poured forth what he had in my other work, somewhat dainty of his materials in this." We turn, then, with eagerness, to his statement as to Sebastian Cabot.

"He sailed, as he affirmed at his return, and made a card thereof, very far westward, with a quarter of the north on the north side of Terra de Labrador, until he came to the latitude of sixty-seven degrees and a half, finding the seas still open."

It would be idle to accompany this statement with any thing more than a request that a map of that region may be looked at in connexion with it.

The tract of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on the North-West passage, was originally published in 1576. It is reprinted, with mutilations which will be mentioned hereafter, in Hakluyt. Referring, for the present, to the latter work, we find at page 16 of the third volume, the following passage:

"Furthermore, Sebastian Cabot, by his personal experience and travel, hath set forth and described this passage in his Charts, which are yet to be seen in the Queen's Majesty's Privy Gallery at Whitehall, who was sent to make this discovery by King Henry the VII., and entered the same fret, affirming that he sailed very far westward with a quarter of the north on the north side of Terra de Labrador, the 11th of June, until he came to the septentrional latitude of sixty-seven degrees and a-half, and finding the sea still open, said that he might and would have gone to Cataia, if the mutiny of the master and mariners had not been."

66

In the "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum" of the celebrated geographer Ortelius, will be found a map designated as " America sive Novi Orbis descriptio ;" in which he depicts, with an accuracy that cannot be attributed to accident, the form of Hudson's Bay, and a channel leading from its northern extremity towards the pole. The publication preceded not only Hudson but Frobisher; and Ortelius tells us that he had Cabot's map before him. Prefixed to his work is a list, alphabetically arranged (according to the christian names), of

the authors of whose labours he was possessed, and amongst them is expressly mentioned Sebastian Cabot. The map was of the World," Universalem Tabulam quam impressam æneis formis vidimus.

The statement of the Portuguese writer Galvano, translated by Hakluyt, is curious, and though there is reason in many places to apprehend interpolation by Hakluyt, yet the epithet Deseado is plainly retained from the Portuguese; signifying the desired or sought for. It is unquestionable that this account, though not perfectly clear, represents Cabot's extreme northern labour to have been the examination of a bay and a river; and from the name conferred, we may suppose, that they were deemed to be immediately connected. with the anxious object of pursuit. On the map of Ortelius, the channel running from the northern part of the bay has really the appearance of a river. After reaching the American coast, the expedition is said, by Galvano, to have gone "straight northwards till they came into 60° of latitude, where the day is eighteen hours long, and the night is very clear and bright. There they found the aire colde, and great islands of ice, but no ground in an hundred fathoms sounding; and so from thence, finding the land to turn eastwards, they trended along by it, discovering all the bay and river named Deseado, to see if it passed on the other side. Then they sailed back againe, till they came to 38° toward the equinoctial line, and from thence returned into England." (p. 33.)

A writer whose labours enjoyed in their day no little celebrity, and may be regarded, even now, as not unworthy of the rank they hold in the estimation of his countrymen, is the noble Venetian, Livio Sanuto, whose posthumous "Geografia," appeared at Venice, in 1588. The work, of which there is a copy in the library of the British Museum, owes its chief interest, at present, to certain incidental speculations on matters connected with Naval Science, of which the author was deeply enamoured. Repeated allusions occur to the map ofil chiarissimo Sebastiano Caboto." Having heard, moreover, from his friend Guido Gianeti de Fano, at one time

ambassador at London, that Sebastian Cabot had publicly explained to the King of England the subject of the Variation of the Needle, Sanuto became extremely anxious, in reference to a long meditated project of his own, to ascertain where Cabot had fixed a point of no variation. The ambassador could not answer the eager inquiry, but wrote, at the instance of Sanuto, to a friend in England, Bartholomew Compagni, to obtain the information from Cabot. It was procured accordingly, and is given by Sanuto (Prima Parte, lib. i. fol. 2), with some curious corollaries of his own. The subject belongs to a different part of our inquiry, and is adverted to here only to show the author's anxious desire for accurate and comprehensive information, and the additional value thereby imparted to the passage (Prima Parte, lib. ii. fol. 17), in which he gives an account of Cabot's voyage corresponding minutely with that which Sir Humphrey Gilbert derived from the map hung up in Queen Elizabeth's Gallery.*

Some items of circumstantial evidence may be adverted to: Zeigler, in his work on the Northern Regions, speaking of the voyage of Cabot, and the statement of his falling in with so much ice, remarks (Argent ed. of 1532. fol. 92. b.)—

"Id testatur quod non per mare vastum, sed propinquis littoribus in sinus formam comprehensum navigarit, quando ob eadem caussam sinus Gothanus concrescat quoniam strictus est, et fluviorum plurium et magnorum ostia salsam naturam in parva copia superant. Inter autem Norduegiam et Islandiam non concrescit ex diversa causa, quoniam vis dulcium aquarum illic superatur á vastitate naturæ salsa." This testifieth that he had sailed not by the main sea, but in places near unto the land, comprehending and embracing the sea in form of a gulph; whereas for the same cause the Gulph of Gothland is frozen, because it is straight and narrow, in the which, also, the little quantity of salt water is overcome by the abundance of fresh water, of many and great rivers that fall into the gulph. But between Norway and Iceland the sea is not frozen, for the contrary cause, forasmuch as the power of fresh water is there overcome of the abundance of the salt water." (Eden's Decades, fol. 268.)

* "E quivi à punto tra questi dui extremi delle due Continenti giunto che fu il chiarissimo Sebastiano Caboto in gradi sessenta sette e mezo navigando allora per la quarta di Maestro verso Ponente ivi chiaro vide essere il mare aperto e spatiosissima senza veruno impedimento. Onde giudico fermamente potersi di la navigare al Cataio Orientale il che ancho haverche a mano a mano fatto se la malignatá del Padrone e de i marinari sollevati non lo havessero fatto ritornari à dietro."

Eden says, in a marginal note, "Cabot told me that this ice is of fresh water and not of the sea."

Great perplexity has been caused by the statement that the expedition under Cabot found the coast incline to the NorthEast. He himself informs us that he reached only to 56° N. lat., and that the coast in that part tended to the East. This seems hardly probable, for the coast of Labrador tends neither at 56° nor at 58° to the East." (Forster, p. 267.) So Navarette (tom. iii. p. 41) thinks that Ramusio's statement cannot be correct, because the latitude mentioned would carry the vessel to Greenland.

It is to be remembered, that the language of Cabot suggests that at the immediate point of arrest he was cheered by the prospect of success. We are led, then, to infer that the sanguine adventurer was, for some reason, inspired with fresh confidence in which his associates refused to participate; and that, terrified by the perils they had encountered, their dissatisfaction came to a head when they found a new career of peril suggested by what they deemed the delusive hopes of their youthful commander. Let us look into the subject with the aid which these suggestions afford. Bylot, who, after penetrating into Hudson's Bay, proceeded up its Northern channel on the west side, as far as 65° and-a-half, represented the coast as tending to the North-east. The Quarterly Review (vol. xvi. p. 168), in an article urging a new expedition in search of the North-West passage, refuses its belief to this statement. We turn, then, to Captain Parry's Narrative of his Second Voyage. It is apparent from an inspection of the map that the course pointed out by Cabot, for passing through the Strait, would conduct a navigator, without fail, to Winter Island. Now, from the very outset of Captain Parry's course from that point, we find him engaged in a struggle with the North-Eastern tendency of the coast. On the 13th of July he was off Barrow's River, which is in lat. 67° 18′ 45"; and having visited the falls of that river, his narrative is thus continued:

"We found, on our return, that a fresh southerly breeze, which had been blowing for several hours, had driven the ice to some distance from the land; so that at four, P.M., as soon as the flood tide had slackened, we cast off and made all possible sail to the northward, steering for a headland, remarkable for having a patch of land towards the sea insular in sailing along shore. As we approached this headland, which I named after my friend Mr Edward Leycester Penrhyn, the prospect became more and more enlivening; for the sea was found to be navigable in a degree very seldom experienced in these regions, and the land trending two or three points to the westward of north, gave us reason to hope we should now be enabled to take a decided and final turn in that anxiously desired direction.”

Another remark is suggested by Captain Parry's Narrative. Every one who has had occasion to consider human testimony, or to task his own powers of recollection, must have observed how tenaciously circumstances remain which had affected the imagination, even after names and dates are entirely forgot

ten.

The statement of Peter Martyr exhibits a trophy of this kind. He recalls what his friend Cabot had said of the influence of the sun on the shore along which he was toiling amidst mountains of ice; "vastas repererit glaciales moles pelago natantes et lucem fere perpetuam tellure tamen libera gelu liquefacto" (Decades, iii. lib. 6), a passage which Hakluyt (vol. iii. p. 8), borrowing Eden's version, renders, "he found monstrous heaps of ice swimming on the sea, and in manner continual day-light; yet saw he the land in that tract free from ice, which had been molten by the heat of the sun." Where do we look for this almost continual day-light, and this opportunity of noticing the appearance of the land? In that very channel, we would say, leading North from Hudson's Bay, where Captain Parry, later in the summer, whilst between 67° and 68°, and threatened every moment with destruction, thus records his own impressions (p. 261): "Very little snow was now lying upon the ground, and numerous streams of water rushing down the hills and sparkling in the beams of the morning sun, relieved in some measure the melancholy stillness which otherwise reigned on this desolate shore."

There has been held in reserve the piece of evidence which goes most into detail.

In the third volume of Hakluyt (p. 25), is found a Tract,