He was granted the title of admiral and
allowed to dress in silks as a nobleman. King Henry gave him 10 pounds,
equal to $500 of modern money, and a pension of 20 pounds, equal to $1000
to-day. It is sometimes said that modern writers attribute an air of
romance to these old pathfinders, {5} which they would have scorned; but
"Zuan Cabot," as the people called him, wore the halo of glory with glee.
To his barber he presented an island kingdom; to a poor monk he gave a
bishopric. His son, Sebastian, sailed out the next year with a fleet of
six ships and three hundred men, coasting north as far as Greenland,
south as far as Carolina, so rendering doubly secure England's title to
the North, and bringing back news of the great cod banks that were to
lure French and Spanish and English fishermen to Newfoundland for
hundreds of years.

[Illustration: SEBASTIAN CABOT]

Where was Cabot's landfall?

I chanced to be in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland, shortly after the 400th
anniversary of Cabot's voyage. King's Cove, landlocked as a hole in a
wall, mountains meeting sky line, presented on one flat rock in letters
the size of a house claim that it was _here_ John Cabot sent his sailors
ashore to plant the flag on cairn of bowlders; but when I came back from
Newfoundland by way of Cape Breton, I found the same claim there. For
generations the tradition has been handed down from father to son among
Newfoundland fisher folk that as Cabot's vessel, pitching and rolling to
the tidal bore, came scudding into King's Cove, rock girt as an inland
lake, the sailors shouted "Bona Vista--Beautiful View"; but Cape Breton
has her legend, too. It was Cabot's report of the cod banks that brought
the Breton fishermen out, whose name Cape Breton bears.

{6} As Christopher Columbus spurred England to action, so Cabot now
spurred Portugal and Spain and France.

Gaspar Cortereal comes in 1500 from Portugal on Cabot's tracks to that
land of "slaty rocks" which the Norse saw long ago. The Gulf Stream
beats the iron coast with a boom of thunder, and the tide swirl meets the
ice drift; and it isn't a land to make a treasure hunter happy till there
wander down to the shore Montaignais Indians, strapping fellows, a head
taller than the tallest Portuguese. Cortereal lands, lures fifty savages
on board, carries them home as slaves for Portugal's galley ships, and
names the country--"land of laborers"--Labrador. He sailed again, the
next year; but