And as I have become a friend of the Admiral's, if I wished to go thither, I should get an Archbishopric. But I have thought that the benefices which your Excellency has in store for me are a surer thing." To those who, in the teeth of contemporary evidence, prefer the claims of Sebastian, the following extracts may be offered; the first from Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, who wrote in the early sixteenth century, the second from Ramusio. Martyr writes: "These north seas have been searched by one Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian born, whom, being yet but in matter an infant, his parents carried with them into England, having occasion to resort thither for trade of merchandises, as is the manner of the Venetians to leave no part of the world unsearched to obtain riches. He therefore furnished two ships in England at his own charges; and, first, with 300 men, directed his course so far towards the North Pole, that even in the month of July he found monstrous heaps of ice swimming in the sea, and in manner continual daylight, yet saw he the land in that tract free from ice, which had been molten by heat of the sun. Thus, seeing such heaps of ice before him, he was enforced to turn his sails and follow the west, so coasting still by the shore he was thereby brought so far into the south, by reason of the land bending so much southward, that it was there almost equal in latitude with the sea called Fretum Herculeum [Straits of Gibraltar], having the North Pole elevate in manner in the same degree. He sailed likewise in this tract so far toward the west that he had the Island of Cuba [on] his left hand in manner in the same degree of longitude. As he travelled by the coasts of this great land, which he named Baccallaos [cod-fish country], he saith that he found the like course of the water towards the west [_i.e._ as before described by Martyr], but the same to run more softly and gently than the swift waters which the Spaniards found in their navigation southward.... Sebastian Cabot himself named those lands Baccallaos, because that in the seas thereabout he found so great multitudes of certain big fish much like unto tunnies (which the inhabitants called Baccallaos) that they sometimes stayed his ships. He found also the people of those regions covered with beasts' skins, yet not without the use of reason. He saith also that there is great plenty of bears in those regions, which used to eat fish. For, plunging themselves into the water where they perceive a multitude of those fish to lie, they fasten their claws in their scales, and so draw them to land and eat them. So that, as he saith, the bears being thus satisfied with fish, are not noisome to men." Ramusio represents Sebastian Cabot as making the following statement: