“The career of Sebastian Cabot,” says Bancroft, “was in the issue as honourable as the beginning was glorious. He conciliated universal esteem by the placid mildness of his character. Unlike the stern enthusiasm of Columbus, he was distinguished for serenity and contentment. For sixty years he was renowned for his achievements and skill.” It is, however, greatly to be regretted that, of all his voyages and discoveries, no detailed account has been preserved. In 1548 he was pensioned by Edward VI. as “The Great Seaman,” and through his advice and influence it was that an expedition to the North of Europe was undertaken, which opened to England the important trade with Russia. He lived to extreme old age, but the place of his death and burial is unknown. The fame of Cabot rests less on any discovery of summer lands, affluent in natural beauty and precious commodities, than on his having made known rich fisheries, the wealth and value of which remain to the present day. The immense shoals of cod in the shallows of those new seas soon attracted the attention of other voyagers, and within seven years of Cabot’s discovery, the hardy fishermen of Brittany and Normandy frequented the abundant fisheries of Newfoundland; Cape Breton remaining as a memorial of them to this day. This fishery, on the coast and bank of Newfoundland, formed the first link between Europe and North America. The Portuguese, excited by the success of England and Spain, entered eagerly into competition with them. Emanuel, king of Portugal, animated also by the great success of his expedition under Vasco de Gama, who, having for the first time doubled the Cape of Good Hope, had reached India, thus opening to Europe all the vast treasures of the Indian Ocean, now sent out Gaspar Cortereal with two vessels, to follow in the course of the Cabots, and explore the north-western seas. Accordingly, reaching the shores of North America, he coasted for about seven hundred miles, admiring as he went along the beauty and fertility of the country, and the grandeur of its forests, the pines of which appeared to him admirably suited for the masts and yards of shipping. The commerce, however, which occupied these Portuguese was of a much less innocent kind than that of timber, or than the cod-fishing of the French; Cortereal freighted his vessels with a number of inoffensive natives, whom he sold for slaves, intending to return for more. But he never returned; he lost his life, it is said, in a contest with the natives, whom he was endeavouring to kidnap.