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
Cabot we know was, during his residence in Spain, a correspondent of
Ramusio,—at least, the latter speaks once of Cabot’s having written to
him, and we shall see farther on that they were not strangers to each
other,—and it is possible that this modification of Peter Martyr’s
language was authorized by him. It is here stated, however, that Cabot
reached only 55° north, while in the prefatory _Discorso_ to his third
volume the editor says that Cabot wrote to him many years before that
he reached the latitude of 67 degrees and a half, and no explanation
is given as to whether the reference is to the same voyage. A fair
inference from the passage above cited from the Italian _Summario_
would be that Sebastian Cabot planned the voyage of discovery after his
father’s death, which we know was not true; as it was equally untrue
that the death of his father made him very rich, for the Italian envoy
tells us that John Cabot was poor. Indeed, the whole language of the
passage relating to Sebastian Cabot is mythical and untrustworthy,
whoever may have inspired it.[15]
I now come to a map of Sebastian Cabot, bearing date 1544, as the
year of its composition, a copy of which was discovered in Germany in
1843, by Von Martius, in the house of a Bavarian curate, and deposited
in the following year in the National Library in Paris. It has been
described at some length by M. D’Avezac, in the _Bulletin de la Société
de Géographie_, 4 ser. xiv. 268-270, 1857. It is a large elliptical
_mappe monde_, engraved on metal, with geographical delineations drawn
upon it down to the time it was made. I saw the map in Paris in 1866.
On its sides are two tables: the first, on the left, inscribed at the
head “Tabula Prima;” and that on the right, “Tabula Secunda.” On these
tables are seventeen legends, or inscriptions, in duplicate; that is to
say, in Spanish and in Latin, the latter supposed to be a translation
of the former,—each Latin legend immediately following the Spanish
original and bearing the same number.[16]
After the seventeen legends in Spanish and in Latin, we come to
a title or heading: “Plinio en el secund libro capitulo lxxix.,
escriue” (“Pliny, in the second book, chapter 79, writes”). Then
follows an inscription in Spanish, no. 18, from Pliny’s _Natural
History_, cap. lxvii., the chapter given above being an error. Four
brief inscriptions, also in Spanish, numbered 19 to 22, relating to
the natural productions of islands in the eastern seas, taken from
other authors, complete the list. So there are twenty-two Spanish
inscriptions or legends on the map,—ten on the first table and twelve
on the second,—the last five of which have no Latin _exemplaires_;
and there are no Latin inscriptions without the same text in Spanish
immediately preceding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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