At all events with his investigations in France Hakluyt’s Discourse became thoroughly English in its tone and tenor, and from this time he labored zealously in the interests of Raleigh. A main point of inquiry in Paris was to avail himself of the many opportunities at the Spanish and Portuguese embassies, and with the French merchants and sailors of Paris, Rouen, Havre and Dieppe, to pick up the particulars of the West India trade of the Spaniards, and the nature of the French dealings in Cape Breton and Canada. This led him to set forth the advantages of direct English western trade independent of France and Spain, and of French and Spanish routes. The fisheries of Newfoundland and the Banks were extensive, and by repeated treaties neutral, but gave no exclusive rights on the adjoining territory to any one of the fishing nations; though in all cases the English by common consent exercised leadership in the Newfoundland harbors among the fishing ships, of which there were now some six or eight hundred a year, notwithstanding the English still fished also at Iceland. It was necessary however in the interests of England for Hakluyt in this Discourse to revive and substantiate the English rights in America by putting forward the prior discovery by the Cabots in 1497-1498. Though he presents this direct claim modestly, yet like Sir Humphrey Gilbert he founds it upon insufficient evidence. In a loose manner he speaks of Cabot and not the Cabots, and attributes to Sebastian the son what properly belongs to John the father. He reposes full confidence in the loose and gossiping statements of Peter Martyr that Sebastian Cabot, a quarter of a century after the discovery, told him that at the time, 1497 or 98,he had explored the coast to the latitude of Gibraltar, that is to Chesapeake Bay and the longitude of Cuba or the city of Cincinnati, a thing not probable, in as much as the active old pilot mayor was never able to declare, down to the time of Gomez, that he had been on that coast before. It would have been foolish in him to fit out in 1524 Gomez to ‘discover’ what the pilot mayor had already explored in 1497. Hakluyt’s arguments and historical statements in this Discourse of 1584 to the present time have always been presented by English diplomatists with confidence, especially against the French. Yet the French continued to maintain their occupation of Cape Breton, the Gulf of St Lawrence and Canada, which together they called New France. It is now however made apparent from contemporary historical documents that have recently been brought to light from the archives of Spain and Venice that John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian, then a youth of some nineteen or twenty years, in 1497 took possession of Cape Breton in the names of Venice and England conjointly, and raised the flags of St Mark and St George. There is not yet any trustworthy evidence that they went south of Cape Breton either in that or the voyage of 1498.