“In the 13 yeere of K. Henry the 7 (by meanes of one John Cabot a Venetian which made himselfe very expert and cunning in knowledge of the circuit of the world and Ilands of the same, as by a Sea card and other demonstrations reasonable he shewed) the king caused to man and victuall a ship at Bristow [Bristol] to search for an Island which he said hee knew well was rich, and replenished with great commodities: Which shippe thus manned and victualed at the kings cost, divers Marchants of London ventured in her small stocks, being in her as chiefe patron the said Venetian. And in the company of the said ship, sailed also out of Bristow three or foure small ships fraught with sleght and grosse marchandises, as course cloth, caps, laces, points & other trifles. And so departed from Bristow in the beginning of May, of whom in this Maiors [mayor’s] time returned no tidings.” The following mention, by “the foresaid Robert Fabian,” “of three Savages which Cabot brought home and presented unto the King in the foureteenth yere of his raigne,” is given as a sort of supplementary testimony (the authenticity of which is questioned by Richard Biddle, Sebastian Cabot’s biographer, who charges this kidnapping of natives upon a later navigator): “This yeere also were brought unto the King three men taken in the Newfound Island that before I spake of, in William Purchas time being Maior: These were clothed in beasts skins, & did eate raw flesh, and spake such speach that no man could understand them, and in their demeanour like to brute beastes, whom the King kept a time after. Of the which upon two yeeres after, I saw two apparelled after the manner of Englishmen in Westminster pallace, which that time I could not discerne from Englishmen, til I was learned what they were, but as for speach I heard none of them utter one word.” And the whole is preceded by that legend of the first discovery of the West Indies by Madoc the Welshman, in the year 1170, which is cast in apparently for what it may be worth. VIII VENTURES IN THE CABOTS’ TRACK In the illustrious year of 1498, which witnessed Sebastian Cabot’s westward discoveries along North America, and Columbus’s sighting of South America, Vasco da Gama, pursuing his eastward navigations, crossed the Indian Ocean, dropped anchor off the city of Calicut, on the Malagar coast, and set up on shore a marble pillar as proof of his discovery of India by an ocean highway. Thus Portugal offset Spain’s claim to the West Indies by priority of discovery, with a claim through first discovery to the East Indies, and stood ready to assert it, while England allowed her right, by the same token, in the North American continent to lapse.