ore it was valued for itself, America
was commonly regarded as a mere obstruction to navigation--the more
solid the more exasperating. Now, in 1498, on his second voyage to
America, John Cabot must have been particularly anxious to get through
and show the King some better return for his money. But he simply
disappears; and all we know is what various writers gleaned from his son
Sebastian later on.

Sebastian said he coasted Greenland, through vast quantities of
midsummer ice, until he reached 67 deg. 30' north, where there was hardly
any night. Then he turned back and probably steered a southerly course
for Newfoundland, as he appears to have completely missed what would
have seemed to him the tempting way to Asia offered by Hudson Strait and
Bay. Passing Newfoundland, he stood on south as far as the Virginia
capes, perhaps down as far as Florida. A few natives were caught. But no
real trade was done. And when the explorers had reported progress to the
King the general opinion was that North America was nothing to boast of,
after all.

A generation later the French sent out several expeditions to sail
through North America and make discoveries by the way. Jacques Cartier's
second, made in 1535, was the greatest and most successful. He went up
the St. Lawrence as high as the site of Montreal, the head of ocean
navigation, where, a hundred and forty years later, the local wits
called La Salle's seigneury 'La Chine' in derision of his unquenchable
belief in a transcontinental connection with Cathay.

But that was under the wholly new conditions of the seventeenth century,
when both French and English expected to make something out of what are
now the United States and Canada. The point of the witling joke against
La Salle was a new version of the old adage: Go farther and fare worse.
The point of European opinion about America throughout the wonderful
sixteenth century was that those who did go farther north than Mexico
were certain to fare worse. And--whatever the cause--they generally did.
So there was yet a third reason why the fame of Columbus eclipsed the
fame of the Cabots even among those English-speaking peoples whose
New-World home the Cabots were the first to find. To begin with,
Columbus was the first of moderns to discover any spot in all America.
Secondly, while the Cabots gave no writings to the world, Columbus did.
He wrote for a mighty monarch and his fame was spread abroad by what we
should now call a