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
Hakluyt also reprinted for the first time, in Latin, with an English
version, an extract from Sebastian Cabot’s map, being no. 8 of the
Legends inscribed upon it, relating to the discovery of North America,
already recited on p. 21. And in saying that it was taken from
Sebastian Cabot’s map, I should explain that Hakluyt says it was “an
extract taken out of the map of Sebastian Cabot, cut by Clement Adams,
... which is to be seen in her Majesty’s Privy Gallery at Westminster,
and in many other ancient merchants’ houses.” This language is a little
equivocal, and some have supposed that Hakluyt intended to say that
the extract simply was cut by Adams, and not that the whole map was
copied by him. Clement Adams was a schoolmaster and a learned man, and
probably was not an engraver. But Hakluyt is elsewhere more explicit.
In his _Westerne Planting_,[82] he says: “His [Cabot’s] own map is in
the Queen’s Privy Gallery at Westminster, the copy whereof was set out
by Mr. Clement Adams, and is in many merchants’ houses in London.”
It was probably reproduced under the inspection of Adams. We do not
know the year in which Adams’s copy was made, unless an equivocal date
in the margin of Purchas[83] may be regarded as expressing the year,
namely “1549.” Purchas has fallen into great confusion in attempting to
describe Cabot’s map and his picture as they hung in Whitehall in his
time.[84]
All these documents relative to the Cabot voyages were reprinted by
Hakluyt in the third volume of his larger work—bearing a similar
general title to that of 1589—published in 1600.[85] In the extract
from Cabot’s map, cut by Clement Adams, there reproduced, he changed
the date of the year of the discovery from 1494 to 1497. This latter
is no doubt the true date, but on what authority did Hakluyt make the
change? M. D’Avezac, who contended that 1494 was the true date of the
discovery, that being the date on Cabot’s map, believed that the change
was the result of a typographical error.[86] That it was deliberate
and that the change was not made by an error of the printer, is shown
by the fact that the altered date appears both in the Latin extract
and the English version of it; and that the index or general catalogue
at the beginning of the third volume, in noticing the authorities for
Sebastian Cabot’s voyage, gives “1497” as the year. Again, a copy of
Emeric Molyneaux’s map, prepared about this time, and inserted in some
copies of this volume of Hakluyt, has on the delineation of Labrador,
which some suppose to have been the _prima vista_ of Cabot, the
following inscription: “This land was discovered by John and Sebastian
Cabot for King Henry VII., 1497.”[87] I have already referred to the
earliest use of this date as the year of the discovery, inscribed on a
map of Locke in Hakluyt’s _Divers Voyages_ of 1582. But the true source
of the date is not here revealed.[88]
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