Raimondo di Soncino, the minister of the duke of Milan, at the court of England, in a letter, written on the twenty-fourth of August, 1497, also speaks of the return of Caboto, saying that he “found two very large and fertile islands, having likewise discovered the Seven Cities, four hundred leagues from England, on the western passage. This next spring his majesty intends to send him with fifteen or twenty ships.”[240] The discovery of the two islands mentioned by Soncino is spoken of in two inscriptions placed on a large map of the world, preserved in the National library in Paris. The Spanish inscription reads: “This land was discovered by Ioan Caboto, a Venetian, and by Sebastian Caboto, his son, in the year of the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, M.CCCC. xciiii [M.CCCC. xcvii?], on the twenty-fourth of June, in the morning, to which they gave the name, Prima tierra vista (First land seen), and to a large island, which is by the said land, they gave the name of Sant Joan (Saint John), because it was discovered the same day.”[241] [Illustration: A copy of a part of a map of the world in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, known as the Cabot map of 1544. (The original is about one-third larger than this copy.)] The map, on the margin of which this inscription appears, seems to be a copy of one made by Sebastiano Caboto, in 1544, if the following statement of another Spanish inscription placed on the chart be true: “Sebastian Caboto, captain and chief pilot of his sacred christian catholic majesty, the emperor, Charles V. of that name, and king, our sovereign, made this large planisphere, in the year of the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, 1544, drawn with degrees of latitude and longitude, and with winds like a marine chart, copying in part the maps of Ptolemy, and in part those of the modern discoverers, Spaniards as well as Portuguese, and in part those made by his father and by him.”[242] As will be seen on the map, the inscription _Prima tierra uista_ is placed opposite the tract of land on the forty-eighth parallel of north latitude, now known as Cape Breton Island. Evidently to obviate a misconception respecting the situation of the land first described, the words _prima uista_ (first seen) are inscribed on the peninsula to which the former inscription directs the eye. On this map also is seen a large island, lying northwest of the land of Prima Vista, bearing the name, Yᵃ de S. Juan (Island of St. John).