It is now plain that John Cabot, in the _Matthew_, leaving Bristol early in May, 1497, and having passed Ireland, shaped his course toward the north, then turned to the west and proceeded for many days until he came to land, where he disembarked on June 24, and planted an English flag. There seems to be no doubt that this was the mainland of North America, and the general opinion has prevailed that his landfall was the extremity of Cape Breton. Cabot stayed some days, but how far he traced the coast, and whether he learned of Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island, are matters of conjecture. At any rate, he soon turned homeward, and arrived in Bristol probably on August 6. We can imagine with what eagerness his story was listened to, as he told of the fair, temperate, well-wooded land, its people and animals and fruitfulness, that he had seen. But the thing that impressed the Bristol men most was the report of the enormous abundance of codfish there. This was something these canny men could see without any illusions, and possess themselves of regardless of papal bulls; and they at once abandoned their northern fishing-grounds and began to resort to the Banks of Newfoundland, whither they were quickly followed by large annual fleets of Norman, Breton, Spanish, and Portuguese fishermen. John Cabot intended to go again the next year and make his way onward to Japan, as he believed he could do, for, like the others, he thought what he had found was only a remote eastern part of Asia; and in 1498 he actually did sail westward from Bristol with five ships, victualed for a year. None of these ships ever returned, and no evidence exists that they ever reached their goal; and with them John Cabot, to whom England owed her early supremacy in North America, disappears from view. Sebastian Cabot was a son of John Cabot, and a skilful map-maker. Whether he went with his father on the first voyage is disputed; there seems no direct evidence that he did so. That he did not go on the second voyage is plain, for he had a long subsequent career, of which accurate knowledge is a late acquisition; here it is only necessary to add that by his statements to Peter Martyr and others he allowed the erroneous impression to pass into history, if he did not directly authorize the lie, that it was he, and not his father, who discovered America and the fishing-grounds.