At Guadaloupe a female cacique conceiving a passion for Caonabo, left the island to accompany the natives of Hispaniola on board, taking with her also a young daughter. Leaving Guadaloupe on the 20th of April, they had again to work against the trade winds; and the provisions were so reduced during the long and tedious voyage, that by the beginning of June there was a famine on board. Land however was now soon seen. On the 11th of June, the vessels anchored in the bay of Cadiz, after a weary voyage of about three months, in the course of which the unfortunate Caonabo died.*

In the harbour of Cadiz, Columbus found three caravels, commanded by Pedro Alonzo Niño, on the point of sailing with supplies for the colony. They sailed the 17th of June. Tidings of the arrival of Columbus having reached the sovereigns, he received a letter from them, congratulating him on his return, and inviting him to court when he should have recovered from the fatigues of his voyage. He repaired to Bargus, where they were expected, and had a more favourable reception than he anticipated.†

Columbus now proposed a farther enterprise, and asked eight ships; two to be dispatched to Hispaniola, with supplies, the remaining six to be put under his command for a voyage of discovery. A compliance with this request was promised; but there was great delay in the performance of the promise. It was not until the spring of 1497, that serious attention was given to the matter. The measures now taken are ascribed mainly to Isabella. The unhappy

* Irving's Columbus, vol 1, p. 339 to 341. † Id. p. 342 to 344.

natives were not forgotten by her. She ordered that the greatest care should be taken of their religious instruction, and the greatest leniency shewn in collecting the tributes imposed upon them. When the public safety should not require stern measures, a disposition to easy rule was inculcated. While every disposition was shewn on her part to dispatch the expedition to the colony, still difficulties arose. At length, the urgent representations of Columbus of the misery to which the colony must be reduced, caused two ships to be dispatched in the beginning of 1498, under the command of Pedro Fernandez Coronel, freighted with supplies. The queen herself advanced the necessary funds out of those intended to form the endowment of her daughter Isabella, then betrothed to Emanuel, king of Portugal. An in stance of her kind feeling towards Columbus was also evinced in the time of her affliction by the death of her only son Prince Juan: the two sons of Columbus, Diego and Fernando, had been pages to the deceased prince; the queen now took them, in the same capacity, into her own service.*

* Irving's Columbus, vol. 1, p. 345 to 352.

CHAPTER VIII.

Of the discovery of North America by Sebastian Cabot. Explanation of the difference between the legal year as used in England before 1752, and the year as generally used in historical chronology. Under a license which issued in February of the legal year 1497, Cabot having discovered North America in June following, that June shewn to be in 1498, and the discovery therefore not in 1497 but in 1498.

Henry the Seventh, by letters patent, bearing date on the fifth day of March, in the eleventh year of his reign, that is to say on the fifth day of March 149%, granted to John Cabot, citizen of Venice, and to Lewis, Sebastian and Santius, sons of the said John, authority to sail to all parts, countries and seas of the east, of the west and of the north, with five ships and as many mariners or men as they will have them in the said ships, upon their own costs, to discover and occupy isles or countries, of the heathen and infidels, before unknown to christians, accounting to the king for a fifth part of the profit upon their return to the port of Bristol, at which port only were they to arrive.*

Of the voyage several accounts are to be found collected in Hakluyt. He gives the report of Galeacius Butrigarius, the pope's legate in Spain, of a con

*Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. 3, p. 5.

versation which Sebastian Cabot, when waxing old, had with him: it was to this effect:

"When my father departed from Venice many years since to dwell in England, to follow the trade of merchandize, he took me with him to the City of London, while I was very young, yet having nevertheless some knowledge of letters of humanity and of the sphere. And when my father died, in that time when news were brought that Don Christopher Colonus, Genoese, had discovered the coasts of India, whereof was great talk in all the court of King Henry the Seventh, who then reigned, insomuch that all men with great admiration affirmed it to be a thing more divine than human, to sail by the west into the east where spices grew, by a way that was never known before, by this fame and report, there increased in my heart a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing. And understanding by reason of the sphere that if I should sail by way of the northwest, I should, by a shorter tract, come into India, I thereupon caused the king to be advertised of my device, who immediately commanded two caravels to be furnished with all things appertaining to the voyage, which was, as far as I remember, in the year 1496, in the beginning of summer. I began therefore to sail towards the northwest, not thinking to find any other land than that of Cathay, and from thence to turn towards India; but after certain days, I found that the land ran towards the north, which was to me a great displeasure. Nevertheless, sailing along the coast to see if I could find any gulf that turned, I found the land still continent to the fiftysixth degree under our pole. And seeing that there the coast turned towards the east, despairing to find the passage, I turned back again, and sailed down by the coast of that land towards the equinoctial, (ever with intent to find the said passage to India,) and came to that part of this

firm land which is now called Florida, where, my victuals failing, I departed from thence and returned into England, where I found great tumults among the people and preparation for wars in Scotland, by reason whereof there was no more consideration had to this voyage. Whereupon I went into Spain to the catholic king."*

We see in this account no disposition to detract from the just fame of Columbus, nor any allegation of Cabot's making more than one voyage under Henry the Seventh. The particular year of his voyage, and its extent, are left by this report in some uncertainty; it remains to be seen, whether they can be more definitely fixed; other accounts will therefore be examined.

That taken from the fourth chapter of the second book of Francis Lopez de Gomara's general history of the West Indias is that Sebastian Cabot rigged up two ships at the cost of King Henry the Seventh, and carried with him three hundred men, and "took the way towards island from beyond the Cape of Labrador until he found himself in fifty-eight degrees and better;" that in the month of July it was so cold, and the ice so great that he durst not pass any further; that the days were very long, in a manner without any night, and for that short night that they had it was very clear; that Cabot feeling the cold turned towards the west, refreshing himself at Baccalaos; and that afterwards he sailed along the coast unto thirty-eight degrees, and thence shaped his course to return into England.†

* Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. 3, p. 6, 7. † Id. 9.