John Cabot, like Columbus, was a Genoese, but neither the exact place nor the date of his birth is known. He was in Venice as early as 1461, as appears from a record in the Venetian archives of his naturalization as a citizen of Venice under date of March 28, 1476, after the prescribed residence of fifteen years. There he was apparently a merchant. It is said that he also made voyages at times as a shipmaster. He became proficient in the study of cosmography and in the science of navigation. With Columbus he accepted the theory of the rotundity of the earth, and is said to have been early desirous of himself putting it to a practical test. At one time he visited Arabia, where at Mecca he saw the caravans coming in laden with spices from distant countries. Asking where the spices grew, he was told by the carriers that they did not know; that other caravans came to their homes with this rich merchandise from more distant parts, and that these others told them that it was brought from still more remote regions. So he came to reason in this wise: that “if the Orientals affirmed to the Southerners that those things come from a distance from them, and so from hand to hand, presupposing the rotundity of the earth, it must be that the last ones get them at the North toward the West.” On this argument he later based his Northwest Passage scheme. He moved to England probably not long before the development of this scheme (some early writers, however, place the date about the year 1477), and took up his residence in Bristol, to “follow the trade of merchandise.” His wife, a Venetian, and his three sons, all supposed to have been born in Venice, accompanied him. Sebastian, the second son, who became the most illustrious of the family, was then a youth, but sufficiently old to have already some “knowledge of the humanities and the sphere,” as he long afterward stated. The brothers, it is supposed, were all of age when the king’s patent was issued, and Sebastian about twenty-three. John Cabot’s expedition sailed early in May and was absent three months. It was essentially a voyage of discovery. His vessel was a Bristol ship, and called the “Matthew.” The ship’s company comprised eighteen persons, “almost all Englishmen and from Bristol.” The foreigners were a Burgundian and a Genoese. Sebastian, it is believed, accompanied his father, but neither of the other sons. The chief men of the enterprise were “great sailors.”