The history of Giovanni Caboto terminates with the information contained in Pedro de Ayala’s letter. Nothing definite is known respecting his death. From the ambiguous and contradictory information furnished by contemporaneous writers concerning the voyages of Sebastiano Caboto, it appears that he sailed to the New Land, either in the years 1497 and 1498, with his father—or in 1499, in command of a fleet of vessels fitted out in the port of Bristol, England. For it is said that, in the fourteenth year of King Henry’s reign,[250] Sebastiano Caboto set sail on a voyage to an island where he knew he could obtain many things of value: “This year one Sebastian Gabato a genoas sonne borne in _Bristow_ professing himselfe to be experte in knowledge of the circute of the worlde and Ilandes of the same as by his Charts and other reasonable demonstrations he shewed, caused the king to man and victual a shippe at _Bristow_ to search for an Ilande whiche he knewe to be replenished with rich commodities: in the ship diverse merchauntes of _London_ adventured smal stockes, and in the company of this shippe, sayled out of _Bristow_ three or foure smal shippes fraught with slight and grosse wares as course cloth, caps, laces, points.”[251] Peter Martyr, speaking of the voyage, says: “He fitted out two ships in England at his own expense, and with three hundred men steered toward the north, until, in July, he found vast icebergs floating in the sea and almost perpetual daylight, though on the land the snow and ice had melted. Therefore he was compelled to turn the sails, as he says, and to go toward the west, and yet he held to the south, the shore bending, that he almost reached the degree of the latitude of the strait of Hercules, and proceeded so far to the west that he may have had the island of Cuba on his left hand, being almost to its degree of longitude.[252] Steering along this coast, which he called Bacallaos, he found, as he says, the currents of the sea running toward the west, but gently, as those found by the Spaniards navigating in the southern waters. It is not only likely to be true, but it may be accepted as a fact, that between these regions [Bacallaos and the West Indies] there is a great space still unexplored that offers a way [to the East], where the water flows from east to west. These currents, I think, are made to flow round the earth by the impulsion of the heavens, and are not thrown up and swallowed again by Demorgorgon breathing.[253] Perhaps, they may be caused, as it is said, by influx and reflux.