[55] A close examination of the story of Cabot shows that the spot first seen by him could not have been Newfoundland. Moreover, Ortelius, who had Cabot’s own map before him, places an island of St. John in lat. 56° N., off the coast of Labrador, with which the account of its general sterility and the abundance of Polar bears agrees much better than with Newfoundland. The present Isle of St. John’s, off the coast of Newfoundland, was so called by Cartier, A.D. 1534 (Hakluyt, iii. p. 204). The second patent, too, speaks of “land and islands” as distinct discoveries of the first voyage. The fact is, all the territory round that neighbourhood was called “New Land,” as in the Stat. 33 Henry VIII., and Robert Thorne (ap. Hakluyt, i. p. 214) speaks of “_our New found lands_.” Thus, West Indies once meant the whole of America. That Cabot reached 67½° of N. lat. cannot be doubted, as Ramusio, in the Preface to the third volume of his ‘Voyages,’ distinctly states that the navigator had written to him to that effect (Ramusio, iii. 417). The presumption is, further, strong that John Cabot, the father, did not make any voyages, but that all the credit of the new discoveries is due to Sebastian and his brothers. Indeed, Sir George Peckham (ap. Hakluyt, iii. p. 165) asserts this as a fact. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, too, while saying that Sebastian was specially sent, makes no allusion to the father. [56] Hakluyt, ibid. [57] A very interesting memoir of Sebastian Cabot, recently published (1869) by Mr. J. F. Nicholls, the City Librarian of Bristol, enables us to add some particulars of his life (and of that of his father) which have been only just discovered. Thus we learn from Mr. Rawdon Brown’s ‘Venetian Calendars’ that John Cabot (the father) was made a citizen of Venice, A.D. 1476; and from the Spanish State Papers, vol. i. p. 177, under date July 25, 1498, “that the people of Bristol sent out every year two or three light ships, _caravelas_, in search of the island of Brazil and the seven cities, according to the fancy of that Italian Cabot; and that _they have done so for the last seven years_,” (i. e., _before_ Columbus had landed on Guanahani). Mr. Nicholls further quotes from a hitherto unpublished tract by Hakluyt, only lately discovered (see Wood’s Maine Hist. Soc., 1868), the following remarkable words. “A great part,” says Hakluyt, “of the continent (of America) as well as of the islands was first discovered for the king of England by Sebastian Gabote, an Englishman, born in Bristowe, son of John Gabote, in 1496; naye, more, Gabote discovered this large tracte of prime lande two years before Columbus saw any part of the continent.” Again, under the date of Aug. 24, 1497, Mr. Rawdon Brown quotes from the Venetian Archives this passage: “Also some months ago, his Majesty Henry VII. sent out a Venetian (so called, naturally, as having been made a Venetian citizen), who is a very good mariner, _and has good