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
If the Countess of Warwick’s father, the Earl of Bedford, had a map
by Cabot, with a northwestern strait delineated on it in degrees of
latitude and longitude as described by Willes, it could not be a
copy of the recently recovered Paris map. In the latter the coast to
the north of Labrador from latitude 58 to 65 runs in a northeasterly
direction, when it suddenly trends in a northwesterly direction, its
delineation ceasing at latitude 68, where is this inscription, “Costa
del hues norueste” (coast west-northwest). Dr. Kohl is of opinion that
Cabot is here delineating, from his own experience, Cumberland Island
in Davis’s Strait; but Mr. Biddle thinks that Cabot’s highest northern
latitude was reached in Fox’s Channel on the shores of Melville
Peninsula. All these speculations seem to me to be based on very
uncertain data.[66]
One is impressed with the ambiguous language of Willes when he speaks
of Cabot’s “own discourse of navigation [which] you may read in his
card drawn by his own hand.” The phrase “discourse of navigation”
sounds so much like Gilbert’s reference in the margin of his tract to
Ramusio, that I am disposed to refer it to that source.
Clement Adams, as we shall see farther on, made a copy of Cabot’s map
or a copy of some reputed map of Cabot, in 1549 (if the supposition as
to the date is correct), which in Hakluyt’s time hung in the gallery at
Whitehall, and of which copies were also to be seen in many merchants’
houses; yet it is difficult to understand how different copies of a
genuine map of Cabot could contain such variations. Certainly they are
all unsatisfactory, and throw but little light on the voyage of the
Cabots.
The indefatigable compiler and translator Belleforest issued in
1576,[67] in Paris, his _Cosmographie Universelle_, on the basis of
the work of Sebastian Munster; and he says[68] that Sebastian Cabot
attempted, at the expense of Henry VII. of England, to find the way
to Cathay by the north; that he discovered the point of Baccalaos,
which the Breton and Norman sailors now call the Coast of Codfish, and
proceeding yet farther reached the latitude of 67 degrees towards the
Arctic pole. Substantially the same passage may be found in Chauveton’s
_Histoire Nouvelle du Nouveau Monde_, p. 141, published at Geneva, in
1579, being a translation of Benzoni, and of other writers.
In connection with Frobisher’s voyage there was published in London,
in 1578, _A Prayse and Report of Maister Martyne Frobisher’s Voyage to
Meta Incognita_, by Thomas Churchyard, a miscellaneous and voluminous
writer, who says: “I find that Cabota was the first in King Henry
VII.’s days that diserned this frozen land or seas from 67 towards the
north, from thence toward the south along the coast to 36 degrees.”[69]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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