“Cabotto himself called these regions Baccallaos (_Baccallaos Cabottus ipse terras illas appellavit_), because in the sea there he found great shoals of certain large fish resembling tunnies, which name was given them by the natives.[254] These fish were so numerous that sometimes they retarded the progress of his ships. He found the people of these regions covered only with skins, but the natives were not wholly destitute of reason. He also relates that in these regions there is a great number of bears which eat fish. They plunge into the water where they see a shoal of fish and fasten their claws between the scales of the fish, and in this way convey them to the shore, where they devour them. The hunger of the bears being appeased, they do not annoy men. He declares further that in many places he saw copper (_orichalcum_) among the natives.”[255] Gomara, the Spanish historian, says: “But he who made this land more widely known was Sebastian Gaboto, a Venetian.[256] He equipped two ships in England (he having been taken there when he was little), (_do tratava desde pequeño_,) at the cost of King Henry VII., who desired the trade in spices the same as the king of Portugal. Others say at his own expense, and that he promised King Henry to go by the north to Cathay, and to bring spices there in less time than the Portuguese from the south. He also went to see if there was any land in the Indies on which a colony might be settled. He took three hundred men and steered a course by the way of Iceland, above the cape of Labrador, going as far as fifty-eight degrees, though he says much farther, stating that in the month of July it was so extremely cold and that there were so many icebergs floating in the sea, that he did not dare to go farther.... So Caboto, having inspected the cold and strange country, changed his course to the west, and returning again to the Baccalaos (_los Baccalaos_), he followed the coast as far as thirty-eight degrees, and then returned to England.”[257] Galvano, the Portuguese historian, says that when Sebastiano Caboto returned from the north, he diminished “the altitude till he came to thirty-eight degrees, and from there returned to England. Others will have it that he went as far as the point of Florida, which is in twenty-five degrees.”[258]