The expedition arrived back at Bristol early in August and the story it brought created a sensation. With his report to the king Cabot exhibited a map of the region visited and a solid globe, and presented the game-snares and net-needle which he had found. He told the king that he believed it practicable by starting from the parts which he had discovered, and constantly hugging the shore toward the equinoctial, to reach an island called by him Cipango, where he thought all the spices of the world and also the precious stones originated; and this region found and colonized, there might be established in London a greater storehouse of spices than the chief one then existing, in Alexandria. All this much moved the king, and he promised to promote a second expedition for this purpose in the following spring. [Illustration: Kidder’s sketch-map of John Cabot’s voyage in 1497.] Meanwhile John Cabot became the hero of the hour, and great honours were paid him. The king gave him money and granted him an annual pension of twenty pounds (equal to two hundred modern pounds in purchasing value), which was to be charged upon the revenues of the port of Bristol; he dressed in silk; and he was styled the “Great Admiral.” He also appears to have been knighted. He distributed largess with a free hand, if the tales of the letter-writers of the day are to be accepted. One wrote that he gave an island to the Burgundian of his crew and another to the Genoese, “a barber of his from Castiglione, of Genoa.” And this writer adds, “both of them regard themselves counts.” Reports of his exploits and of the king’s further intentions were duly made known to rival courts by their envoys in England, and excited their jealousy. The second expedition was provided for by the king’s license dated the third of February, 1497/8. This was a patent granted to John Cabot alone, the sons not being named. Hakluyt gives only the following record from the rolls: “The king upon the third day of February, in the 13 yeere of his reigne, gave license to John Cabot to take sixe English ships in any haven or havens of the realme of England, being of the burden of 200 tunnes, or under, with all necessary furniture, and to take also into the said ships all such masters, mariners, and subjects of the king as willingly will go with him, &c.” The patent itself did not find print till the nineteenth century. It was published for the first time in 1831, in the _Memoirs of Sebastian Cabot_, by Richard Biddle, an American lawyer of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, sometime resident in London, by whom, after painstaking search, it was found in the rolls. Quaint of style as well as of spelling, it runs as below: