f
Aristotle, Plato, Strabo, and Ptolemy. As in the case of Scandinavia,
several countries have endeavoured to establish a claim for the
priority of discovery in America. Some sailors of that Biscayan coast,
which has given so many bold pilots and mariners to the world of
adventure and exploration--that Basque country to which belonged Juan
de la Cosa, the pilot who accompanied Columbus in his voyages--may have
found their way to the North Atlantic coast in search of cod or whales
at a very early time; and it is certainly an argument for such a claim
that John Cabot is said in 1497 to have heard the Indians of
northeastern America speak of Baccalaos, or Basque for cod--a name
afterwards applied for a century and longer to the islands and
countries around the Gulf. It is certainly not improbable that the
Normans, Bretons, or Basques, whose lives from times immemorial have
been passed on the sea, should have been driven by the winds or by some
accident to the shores of Newfoundland or Labrador or even Cape Breton,
but such theories are not {22} based upon sufficiently authentic data
to bring them under the consideration of the serious historian.

It is unfortunate that the records of history should be so wanting in
definite and accurate details, when we come to the voyages of John
Cabot, a great navigator, who was probably a Genoese by birth and a
Venetian by citizenship. Five years after the first discovery by
Columbus, John Cabot sailed to unknown seas and lands in the Northwest
in the ship _Matthew_ of Bristol, with full authority from the King of
England, Henry the Seventh, to take possession in his name of all
countries he might discover. On his return from a successful voyage,
during which he certainly landed on the coast of British North America,
and first discovered the continent of North America, he became the hero
of the hour and received from Henry, a very economical sovereign, a
largess of ten pounds as a reward to "hym that founde the new ile." In
the following year both he and his son Sebastian, then a very young
man, who probably also accompanied his father in the voyage of 1497,
sailed again for the new lands which were believed to be somewhere on
the road to Cipango and the countries of gold and spice and silk. We
have no exact record of this voyage, and do not even know whether John
Cabot himself returned alive; for, from the day of his sailing in 1498,
he disappears from the scene and his son Seba