=20. The Cabots and their Voyages.=--We need not be told that these expeditions made a great sensation in Europe, and that many bold mariners started out from Portugal and Spain. The sovereigns of other nations, too, as England and France, soon sent navigators to make claims for their own countries. Among the most notable of these were the Cabots, John and his son Sebastian. Though natives of Genoa, they lived in England and had entered the service of King Henry VII. They had permission from him to sail across the Atlantic and to take possession, in his name, of any lands which were not known to Europeans. In May, 1497, with one ship and eighteen men, John Cabot with his son Sebastian left England. The first land he saw is supposed to have been either Cape Breton Island or the shores of Labrador. He did not remain long on that cold and dismal coast, but returned home to England after an absence of about three months. John Cabot was probably the first European since the days of the Northmen to set foot upon the mainland of North America. On his return he was received with much honor by the king. He was called "The Great Admiral," and he went about the streets richly dressed in silk, followed by a crowd of admirers. The next year the Cabots set out upon a second voyage. This took a wider range. The exact limits of these explorations are not clearly known; but it is believed that they discovered the coast of Labrador, sailed along to Newfoundland, thence probably as far south as Cape Cod, and perhaps to Cape Hatteras. Inasmuch as Columbus never set foot upon the mainland of North America, the Cabot discoveries are of importance. It is claimed that they gave England a right to the settlement and ownership of this northern continent. Sebastian lived to be a very old man, and to the last was full of enthusiasm about the new-found world He was known as "The Great Yeoman." It was said of him: "He gave England a continent--and no one knows his burial place!" =21. A Spanish Knight seeks the Fountain of Youth.=--A singular expedition was that of Ponce de Leon, a brave knight who had sailed with Columbus on his second voyage. The Spaniards had heard somewhere in eastern Asia the old, old legend, of a fountain whose water gave perpetual youth to any one who drank of it. In 1513 Ponce de Leon sailed from Porto Rico, where he had been governor, with three vessels, in search of this wonderful "Fountain of Youth." On Easter Sunday (which in Spanish is Pascua Florida, flowering Easter) he first came within sight of a coast to which he gave the name Florida, partly in honor of the day and partly because it was indeed a region of flowers. He took possession of it in the name of the King of Spain. Never before had he seen so beautiful a region. It seemed the land of eternal summer.