It is not my intention to wander over all the debatable ground of the Cabot voyages, where every circumstance bristles with conflicting theories. The original authorities are few and scanty, but mountains of hypotheses have been built upon them, and too often the suppositions of one writer have been the facts of a succeeding one. Step by step the learned students before alluded to have established certain propositions which appear to me to be true, and which I shall accept without further discussion. Among these I count the following: 1. That John Cabot was a Venetian, of Genoese birth, naturalized at Venice on March 28, 1476, after the customary fifteen years of residence, and that he subsequently settled in England with all his family. 2. That Sebastian, his second son, was born in Venice, and when very young was taken by his father to England with the rest of the family. 3. That on petition of John Cabot and his three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancio, letters-patent of King Henry VII were issued, under date March 5, 1496, empowering them, at their own expense, to discover and take possession for England of new lands not before found by any Christian nation. 4. That John Cabot, accompanied perhaps by his son Sebastian, sailed from Bristol early in May, 1497. He discovered and landed upon some part of America between Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and Cape Chidley, in Labrador; that he returned to Bristol before the end of July of the same year; that, whatever might have been the number of vessels which started, the discovery was made by John Cabot's own vessel, the Matthew of Bristol, with a crew of eighteen men. 5. That thereupon, and in consideration of this discovery made by John Cabot, King Henry VII granted new letters-patent, drawn solely to John Cabot, authorizing a second expedition on a more extended scale and with fuller royal authority, which letters-patent were dated February 3, 1498; that this expedition sailed in the spring of 1498, and had not returned in October. It consisted of several ships and about three hundred men. That John and Sebastian Cabot sailed on this voyage. When it returned is not known. From the time of sailing of this expedition John Cabot vanishes into the unknowable, and from thenceforth Sebastian alone appears in the historic record.