Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8): English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8): English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
In 1530, four years after Martyr’s death, there was published at
Alcala (Complutum), in Spain, his eight Decades, _De Orbe Novo_, which
included the three first published in 1516, in the last of which,
the third, appeared the notice of Sebastian Cabot cited above. And
it may be added here that the three Decades, including the _De nuper
... repertis insulis_, etc., or abridgment, so called, of the fourth
Decade, printed at Basel in 1521, were reprinted together in that city
in 1533. Of later editions there will be occasion to say something
farther on. Martyr’s notice of Cabot was the earliest extant, and the
republication of these Decades, at different places, served to keep
alive the important fact of the discovery of North America under the
English flag. In some of these later Decades, written in 1524 and 1525,
references will be found to Sebastian Cabot and to his employment in
Spain.
There was published in Latin at Argentoratum (Strasbourg), in 1532,
by James Ziegler,—a Bavarian theologian, who cultivated mathematics
and cosmography with success,—a book relating in part to the northern
regions. Under the head of “Gronland” the author quotes Peter Martyr’s
account of Sebastian Cabot’s voyage:—
“Peter Martyr of Angleria writeth in his Decades of the Spanish
navigations, that Sebastian Cabot,[9] sailing from England continually
towards the north, followed that course so far that he chanced upon
great flakes of ice in the month of July; and diverting from thence
he followed the coast by the shore, bending toward the south until he
came to the clime of the island of Hispaniola above Cuba, an Island
of the Cannibals. Which narration hath given me occasion to extend
Gronland beyond the promontory or cape of Huitsarch to the continent
or firm land of Lapponia above the castle of Wardhus; which thing I
did the rather for that the reverend Archbishop of Nidrosia constantly
affirmed that the sea bendeth there into the form of a crooked elbow.”
This writer evidently supposed that Cabot sailed along the east coast
of Greenland, and the inference he drew from Cabot’s experience, as
related by Martyr, confirmed his belief that that country joined on
to Lappona (Lapland),—an old notion which lasted down to the time of
Willoughby,—making “one continent;” and so he represented it on his
map no. 8, published in his book.[10] He places “Terra Bacallaos” on
the east coast of “Gronland.” He believed that Cabot’s falling in with
ice proved “that he sailed not by the main sea, but in places near unto
the land, comprehending and embracing the sea in the form of a gulf.”
I have copied this from Eden’s English version of Ziegler (_Decades_,
fol. 268), in the margin of which at this place Eden says, “Cabot told
me that this ice is of fresh water, and not of the sea.”[11]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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