England, although still Catholic, was not disposed to allow Spain and Portugal to monopolize between them those portions of the earth which Europeans had not yet seen; and we are told that there was grievous disappointment at the court of London because Spain had been the path-breaker to the west. In 1497 John Cabot set sail from England armed with a trading charter, to endeavor to reach Asia by way of the northwest. He had knowledge of the exploit of Columbus, and may well have heard of the Scandinavian discovery of Vinland. Early in the morning of the 24th of June he sighted the gloomy headlands of Cape Breton,--the first known European to make this important discovery. It is on record that "great honors" were heaped upon the adventurous mariner upon his return to England, and that the generous king gave "£10 to him that found the new isle"--the equivalent of $700 or $800 of our money. Sidenotes: Portugal reaches India by the southeast. Sebastian Cabot's voyage. The year 1498 was one of the most notable in the long and splendid history of maritime discovery. Young Vasco da Gama, of Portugal, turned the Cape of Good Hope, and gayly sailed his little fleet into the harbor of Calicut (May 20). At last India had been discovered by the southeast passage: Portugal had first reached the goal. In May, also, Columbus set forth upon his third voyage, during which he first discovered the mainland of South America; and in the same month John Cabot's second son, Sebastian, left Bristol in the hope of finding the northwest passage, which his father had failed to reach, and which was undiscovered until our own times (1850). Icebergs turned Sebastian southward, and he explored the American shores down to the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay. From this voyage sprang the claim under which the English colonies in North America were founded. Sidenote: Newfoundland as a colonial nucleus. Three years later (1501) a Portuguese mariner, Gaspar Cortereal, explored the American coast south of the Gulf of St. Lawrence for a long distance. By 1504 we know that fishermen from Brittany and Normandy were at Newfoundland, and from that time forward there appear to have been more or less permanent colonies of fishermen there,~-French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English,--with their little huts and drying scaffolds clustered along the shores. Newfoundland proved valuable as a supply and repair station for future explorers and colonizers. It was the nucleus of both French and English settlement in America. By 1578 there were no less than one hundred and fifty French vessels alone employed in the Newfoundland fisheries, and a good trade with the Indians had been established. Sidenote: Searching for a short cut through America.