The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525Weise, Arthur James
History
The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525
Weise, Arthur James
America -- Discovery and exploration
In the discourse of Sir Humphrey Gilbert respecting “a new passage to
Cataia,” it is said: “Furthermore, Sebastian Cabota by his personall
experience, and trauell, hath set foorth, and described this passage,
in his Charts, whiche are yet to be seene in the Queenes Maiesties
priuie Gallerie, at Whitehall, who was sent to make this discoverie by
King Henrie the seauenth, and entered the same fret: affirming, that he
sailed very far westward, with a quater of the North, on the north side
of Terra de Labrador[259] the eleuenth of June, vntil he came to the
septentrional latitude of 67½ degrees and finding the seas still open
said that he might, and would have gone to Cataia, if the mutinie of the
Maister and Mariners had not ben.”[260]
It is further related that in the eighteenth year of the reign of King
Henry VII.,[261] three Indians were brought to England from the islands
discovered by Sebastiano Caboto: “Thys yeare, were brought vnto the Kyng
three men taken in the new founde Ilands, by Sebastian Gabato, before
named in Anno 1468, these men were clothed in Beastes skinnes, and eate
raw Flesh, but spake such a language as no man could vnderstand them,
of the which three men, two of them were seene in the Kings Court at
Westminster two yeares after, clothed, like Englishmen, and could not bee
discerned from Englishmen.”[262]
The field of the discoveries of Giovanni Caboto, represented on the map
made by Juan de la Cosa, in 1500, and on the one of 1544, in the National
library, in Paris, was apparently the Atlantic coast of Cape Breton
Island[263] and of Nova Scotia. The part of the peninsula designated
Prima Vista, (First Seen,) on the map of 1544, appears to be the same as
that which on La Cosa’s chart is denominated Cavo de Inglaterra (Cape of
England). The coast, from Cape Breton southwestward to the Bay of Fundy,
the sea discovered for the English (_mar descubierta por inglese_),[264]
is delineated by La Cosa with approximate accuracy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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