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* See Humboldt, 1. c. p. 234.
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496
AGENCY OF THE NETHERLANDERS.
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The Germans became, in fact, the great masters in the art of map-making. They constructed maps more accurately than others, and were the first who attempted that projection so useful to navigators, which, in 1569, was brought to per- fection by Mercator, in the little town of Duisburg, and which, from him, was called " Mercator's Projection."*
By publishing many editions of the reports of Amerigo Vespucci, who was a favorite with the Germans, and by re- peating his name on the numerous maps of South America, where it was first placed, the German geographers and map- makers may be said to have fastened on the western conti- nent the name it now bears, and to have been the means of its becoming universally adopted .; The best and most com- plete map of the world of the sixteenth century was made in · a small German town, under the patronage of a German prince, by Mercator, the celebrated author of the planisphere. This famous map contained all parts of the old world, with the discoveries in the new, including portions of our north- east coast, very accurately drawn, and from the best authori- ties.
8. AGENCY OF THE NETHERLANDERS.
The Netherlanders, particularly the Flemings, had founded a colony in the western islands before the time of Columbus ; yet they do not appear until a much later period to have taken part in the work of discovery. And even as geographers, writers, printers, and map-makers, they fell far behind the Germans. After the death of Mercator, in 1595, the cop- perplates of his charts were sold to the Belgian Hondius, and
* Compare upon this Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, p. 368 seq. München, 1865.
t This question has been amply treated by D'Avezac, in his work, " Mar- tin Hylacomylus" (Waltzemüller), etc. Paris, 1867.
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AGENCY OF THE NETHERLANDERS.
were transported from Germany to the Netherlands, where another Mercator, the famous geographer and cartographer Ortelius, had arisen. After that time, geography and car- tography began to flourish in the Netherlands, while these, with other arts, greatly declined in Germany.
At the time of their struggle with Spain, the heroic and victorious Netherlanders became powerful on the ocean ; and particularly after Hudson's discoveries, and their settlement at New Amsterdam, they not only became a leading maritime power, but, what interests us more in our present object, they largely contributed to the progress of geography and car- tography, and gave improved drawings of the peninsula of New England and of the coast of Maine. But all this will find a more suitable place hereafter.
What we have said in this concluding chapter will, we trust, justify us in bringing this volume to a close with the termina- tion of this first series of exploring voyages to America, undertaken by the four great maritime nations of Europe. These voyages, while proposed, in the first instance, to dis- cover a shorter route by the west to India, prepared the way for the further exploration of the north-east coast, and its settlement by the French and English. The history of these later enterprises, prosecuted by the Gilberts and Raleighs, the De Monts and Champlains, in the brilliant reigns of Elizabeth of England and Henry IV. of France, will furnish interesting materials for a future volume.
32
VI
APPENDIX.
A
LETTER
ON THE
VOYAGES OF JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT,
BY M. D'AVEZAC, €
OF PARIS.
NOTICE.
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BRUNSWICK, Feb. 15, 1869. To HON. WM. WILLIS, LL.D., EDITOR:
Dear Sir,-I have the honor to present to you, for publication in the first volume of the new series of the Collections of the Maine Histor- ical Society, the translation of a letter I have lately received from M. D'Avezac, relating to some of the topics discussed in this volume. In one of the frequent and agreeable interviews which I enjoyed with" this distinguished scholar during my recent residence in Paris, I took occasion to express to him the interest I had felt in some papers pub- lished by him a few years before, wherein he advocates the opinion, that the voyage made by the Cabots in which North America was first discovered, after the times of the Northmen, took place in 1494, and was followed in 1407, 1493, and 1517, by three successive voyages to the same regions. I stated to him at the same time my impression, that this opinion was generally regarded as having been disproved by certain documents, recently brought to light from the Venetian and Spanish archives; and that it was certainly so considered by many of our best American scholars. He, however, had seen nothing in those documents to induce him to abandon the opinion referred to, or even to modify it materially. But he was disposed, in deference to the judgment of those who took a different view, for many of whom he entertained the highest personal regard, and also in compliance with my request in the name of our Society, to examine anew the subject in question, in the light of the more recent, as well as the carlier authori- ties. The results of that examination are contained in the letter, a translation of which is herewith submitted. And if the theory of the author is not cleared of all difficulties, and proved beyond a doubt, by this new vindication, it is certainly commended to the acceptance of his readers, by the learning and ability with which it is advocated. Between discussions so able, as that of Dr. Kohl in his sections on Cabot's map on the one side, and this of M. D'Avezac on the other, it must be difficult to decide. At all events, our readers may well con- sider themselves as enjoying the best means of coming to a just decis- ion on this question, which lies at the beginning of our history, in having it argued before them on opposite sides, by two of the most eminent living authors in this department of learning.
I remain, dear Sir,
Very truly and respectfully yours, &c.,
LEONARD WOODS.
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LETTER OF M. D'AVEZAC.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.
42 RUE DU BAC, PARIS, Dec. 15, 1868. TO LEONARD WOODS, LL.D., BRUNSWICK, ME .:
Dear Sir,-You were pleased to remind me, last June. that I had incidentally attempted, more than ten years previously (in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie of Paris, October, 1857, note k, pp. 266 to 278), to establish a certain order in the confused and contradictory notions which had been previously entertained, relating to the voyages of discovery of the two celebrated navigators, John and Sebastian Cabot, along the coasts of North America: and the distinction which I had proposed, of four successive expeditions under the dates, 1404, 1497, 1498, and 1517, appeared to your indulgent courtesy to be a new and very plausible theory.
But subsequently to the time when I announced that theory, many new documents, derived principally from the researches of Messrs. Rawdon Brown and George Bergenroth in the archives of Italy and Spain, had come to light, and were thought by you to have been gener- ally considered as affording a decisive argument in favor of the com- mon opinion, that it was in 1497 when the first voyage took place; such at least you regarded as the opinion which had been professed by two of your most learned countrymen, in some erudite observations sug- gested by the map of Sebastian Cabot, at the time when a fac-simile copy of this map was presented to the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts; observations which have been published in the Proceedings of that Society for the years 1866 and 1867, and which are specially recommended by the names of their authors, the Reverend Edward E. Hale of Boston, and Charles Deane, Esq. of Cambridge. You subsequently added, with good reason, another name still more considerable, that of Mr. George Bancroft, the great historian of the United States, who had already made use of these documents, at that time not as yet published, in two biographical articles devoted to John
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LETTER OF M. D'AVEZAC.
and Sebastian Cabot in the New American Encyclopedia, edited by Ripley and Dana; and I find myself at present in a condition to add to those a fourth name, that of Mr. John Carson Brevoort, President of the Historical Society of Long Island, from whom I have received at last, after many postal vicissitudes, a memoir on the voyage of Cabot of 1497, printed last March in the Historical Magazine of New York.
As this question is, at this moment, in the order of the day before the Historical Society of Maine, which contemplates the publication of a Documentary History of that State, you request me, in the name of that Society, to inform you, whether I consider the new documents to. which you refer, as consistent with the theory which I had proposed; and, at all events, whether my ideas upon the subject in question have undergone any modification in consequence of new researches, made either by myself or by others. My opinion deliberately formed on this subject, you had the kindness to add, will have the highest authority, not only in Europe, but also in America, with all persons who interest themselves in the study of the exploits performed by the great navi- gators of the heroic age of discovery, but who are embarrassed with the . difficulties of this study.
Permit me, dear sir, to say to you, first of all, how much the solemnity of this appeal alarms me, and how many serious perplexities are awak- ened in my mind by this judicial authority with which you seem, in some sort, to invest me, in a cause so much controverted, and not yet suffi- ciently cleared up : accordingly I do not hesitate to decline a part so ambitious ; and shall confine myself to setting forth what I believe to be the truth, without any pretension to be believed on my mere word, and without forbidding myself to advance, in case of an absolute chasm, some expletive conjecture, offering it simply for what it is, and sub- mitting it very humbly to the mercy of any who may not choose to accept it.
It is five years since, that, on occasion of an edition of one of the voyages of Jacques Cartier, for which I was requested to furnish an his- torical introduction of a few pages, my studies were directed again to the whole series of European navigations along the coasts of America now under the dominion of the Anglo-Saxon race, from the first Irish predecessors of our present Fenians, from the Welsh of Madoc ap Owen, and the Scandinavians of Iceland, of Norway, and the Faroe Islands, down to the English, the Portuguese, the French, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The explorations of the two Cabots being thus taken up again in their natural connection, and examined anew, ap- peared to me such as I had before considered them. This Brece et
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LETTER OF M. D'AVEZAC.
succincte Introduction historique, which I finished on the 12th of August, 1863, and which appears at the head of the second voyage of Cartier, published by the Brothers Tross, was reprinted substantially in the July number, 1864, of the Annales des Voyages of Malte-Brun, where the § (vi) relating to the Cabots, occupies less than two pages (77 to 79), and reproduces, in a simple recital, the results of which I had given a résumé in 1857, in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie of Paris.
Your last appeal has led me to take up again, with more care, and with a more obstinate perseverance in the pursuit of original docu- ments, this history of the navigations of John and Sebastian Cabot to their new-found-lands. I have here attempted a narrative of these voyages, in which the passages adduced in support of each fact (les pièces justificatives) will be incorporated in their own language: for the necessity of relying only on the original texts has been proved to me, again and again. by the treacheries proverbially, and with too much reason, charged upon translators; of which indeed I have met with more than one example in my present inquiry. But these original texts, which must be generally procured from foreign archives and libraries, one never receives without waiting some time for them, which might delay a good deal the completion of my digest. But I am un- willing to postpone any longer a reply, which is already very late; and I purpose to send you, succinctly, the history which has resulted from such an examination as I have thus far been able to give to the original sources, which are already accessible to my curiosity ; in which investi- gation, the most obliging assistance has been rendered me by the Abbé Valentinelli, the Marquis d'Adda, Mr. Buckingham Smith, Mr. Ber- genroth, Mr. Paul Meyer, for which it would be ungrateful in me not to return them my thanks in this place.
I come now to the matter in hand. In some place, more or less obscure, in the region of Genoa, if not in the City of Palaces itself (perhaps precisely in Castiglione), toward the middle of the fifteenth century, as I suppose, John Cabota, Caboto, or Cabot was born; who, early in 1460 at the latest, went to live at Venice; married there a daugh- ter of the country, by whom he had three sons; and there, after fifteen years of residence, and by the unanimous consent of the senate, ex- pressed by one hundred and forty-nine votes, obtained from the doge (André Vandramino), on the 28th March, 1476, his naturalization as a citizen of Venice (privilegium civitatis de intus et extra). He had ad- dicted himself, it appears, with great success, to the study of cosmog- raphy and the practice of navigation : perhaps he had sought the teach- ing of the celebrated Florentine cosmographer, Paul Toscanelli; and
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LETTER OF M. "D'AVEZAC.
at all events, he had doubtless adopted, with the avidity of a studious adept, the theories professed by that aged sage, respecting the dispo- sition of land and water on the surface of the globe,-theories, the fame of which had reached even to the court of Portugal, and had ex- cited there a curiosity, which he satisfied in a well-known letter writ- ten from Florence, under date of June 25, 1474, to Canon Fernam Martins, an intimate of Alphonso V, to which there was annexed a nautical explanatory chart, representing the Atlantic Ocean, bounded on the east by the shores of Europe and Africa, and on the west by those of oriental Asia, with a total interval of 130° of longitude be- tween Lisbon and Quinsay, the magnificent capital of the mighty em- pire of Cathay. At 50° this side of Cathay, lay the great island of Zipangu or Japan. At 30° distance from Lisbon, the great island An- tilia, or the island of the "Seven Cities " was thrust forward, which the maps of the time placed beyond the Azores; with some other islands in a location less fixed, among which the island of Brésil occurred in different places. A direct way was thus boldly traced by the learned Florentine across the Western Ocean, even to that opulent country of the grand Khan, whose incomparable riches had been seen and related, two centuries before, by the Venetian Marco Polo. The attention of Alonzo V. was diverted by cares nearer home, by a war with strange reverses, from these meditations about a maritime route to the Indies by the west. But Cabot, who, in his travels in the east (Ei dice che altre volte esso è stato a la Mecha) had learned from the caravans of Arabia, that the spices came from hand to hand from the remotest coun- tries of the east, could not fail to revolve in his brain adventurous thoughts regarding the distant horizon, where that extreme Orient was distinctly indicated, toward which he saw ranged, at due intervals like successive station-houses, the islands of Brésil, of Antilia, and then Zipangu !
The new citizen of Venice, taking his wife and sons with him, to go into foreign parts to found an establishment of maritime commerce, in accordance with the cosmopolitan habits of the Venetians, selected for this purpose the English port of Bristol, the channel of which opens exactly toward those occidental regions, where Toscanelli pointed out, in the distance, the fortunate shores of Cathay. It may be conjectured, that it was not far from the year 1477, that the family of Cabot trans- ferred its Penates to this port in the extreme west of Europe; for the second son. Sebastian, whom I suppose to have been born in 1472 or 1473, was then only a child.
But, in 145), the 15th July, we see a ship and its consort, of eighty
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LETTER OF M. D'AVEZAC.
tons burden, belonging to the merchant, Jay, the younger, and con- ducted by the most skillful mariner in all England, setting forth from Bristol to go west from Ireland to seek the island of Bresil; and on the 18th of the September following, the news reaches Bristol, that after a cruise of two months, the expedition had returned to a port of Ireland without having found the island sought. This magister nacis scientifi- cus marinarius totius Anglic, I persuade myself is no other than John Cabot himself.
But from a doubt let us pass to a certainty. We have arrived now at the year 1491; and we know this time, appositely, that there then com- menced a series of consecutive explorations, which employed, each year, two, three, four caravels, proceeding from the port of Bristol, to sail under the direction of John Cabot, the Genoese, for the discovery of the isle of Brésil, and of the Seven Cities : this is what the Spanish ambas- sador, Pierre d'Ayala, sends officially to his government in'a despatch of the 25th of July, 1498, on occasion of the departure of a great expedi- tion confided to this Genoese. Los de Bristol ha siete annos que cada anno han armado dos, tres, cuatro caravelas para ir á buscar la isla del Brasil y las Siete Ciudadas, con la fantasia deste Genoves.
At last, on the fourth voyage of this septennial series, in the month of June, 1494, the search is no longer in vain: in one of the legends accompanying the great elliptical Mappe-Monde, published in 1544 by Sebastian Cabot, then grand pilot of Spain. the following indisputable declaration is inscribed, both in Spanish and Latin, and is pointed out by an express reference [in the body of the map], for what relates to Tierra de los Bacallaos : "This land was discovered by John Cabot a Venetian, and Sebastian Cabot his son, in the year of the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, M.CCCC.XCIII (1494), the twenty-fourth day of June [at 5 o'clock] in the morning; to which land has been given the name of The land first seen : and to a great island, which is very near the said land, the name of St. Jolin has been given, on account of its having been discovered the same day."
This same date, 1494, such as we ascertain it on the very map of Sebas- tian Cabot, preserved at Paris in the geographical department of the " Bibliotheque Imperiale," was extracted in a similar manner in 1556, at Oxford, in a transcript by Nathan Kochhaf (Chytraus), and copied by Hakluyt in 1589, at the palace of Westminster, from another edition engraved by Clement Adams. A typographical error, rather than an ill-advised arbitrary correction, changed that date, in this same citation, in a later edition of Hakluyt's collection. This would not be worth mentioning, if I were not obliged to give notice here, that more than
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LETTER OF M. D'AVEZAC.
one careless reader has inconsiderately, and without being sufficiently informed, taken the date thus corrupted, for that which Hakluyt had actually copied from the original, engraved by Adams. Nor can this date of 1494, which was really written. be invalidated, on the other hand, on the pretext, that the legend did not emanate from Sebastian Cabot himself. From whom then did it come? Its origin may, in my judgment, assuredly be traced to John Cabot, who must be supposed to have inscribed it in Italian; and this explains how the different ver- sions which have been made of it into Latin, while they are identical in substance, are not precisely the same in form. As for the Spanish rendering, it is evidently posterior to the establishment of Sebastian Cabot in Spain. But of what avail is all this? The legends belong incontestably to the chart; for those which, on account of their length, are not included within the interior of the design, are plainly attached to it by references. And if any one could doubt for a moment, that the whole was the proper work of Sebastian Cabot, it would only be neces- sary in order to remove immediately all hesitation in this regard, that he should read the first lines of the Retulo del auctor, beginning thus: Sebastian Caboto capitan y piloto mayor de la Sacra Cesarea Catolica Majestad del Imperador don Carlos quinto deste nombre y Rey nuestro sennor, hizo esta figura extensa en plano, anno del nascimiento de nuestro Salvador Jesu Christo de M.D. XLIIII. annos, . . . etc.
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I assume it, then, as a fact to be hereafter uncontested, as I have always regarded it as incontestable, that the first discovery of Cabot was made the 24th of June, 1494.
But during the period of the successive attempts of this intrepid navigator to find a passage to the Indies by the west, the great fact of the Columbian discovery had been accomplished; and in its train had followed the promulgation of the papal bull, adjudging this new world to Spain ; and immediately after, the protestation of Portugal, and the establishment of a line of demarcation, and finally, the treaty of Tor- desillas of 7th June, 1494. Accordingly, when John Cabot had, in his turn, discovered new countries, he was obliged to acknowledge that it could appertain only to a sovereign, to declare them his own, and to confer a beneficial domain over them on the discoverer; and he had recourse to Henry VII, king of England. to escape from the exclusive pretensions of Spain and Portugal. Perhaps after this appeal to the royal intervention, he had to contend against jealous influences from abroad; at least it is certain, that the Castilian ambassador Ruy Gon- zales de Puebla, received an order from his court, to make representa- tions against every enterprise of this kind. ( Estas cosas semejantes son
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LETTER OF M. D'AVEZAC.
cosas muy ynciertas y tales que para agora no contiene entender en ellas, y tanbien mirad que a aquellas partes no se puede entender en esto, sin perjuycio nuestro o del Rey de Portugal.) However this may be, the king of England signed at last, at Westminster, the 5th of March, 1496, letters-patent to John Cabot, citizen of Venice, and his three sons, Louis, Sebastian, and Sancius, and their heirs, and others concerned, to go by sea under the royal British standard, for the discovery of un- known lands in the western hemisphere, and to take legal possession of them in the name of the crown of England, to be enjoyed by him, and his sons and heirs, for their sole use and inheritance, as vassals and officers of the king, reserving one-fifth part of the net profits of all the products which should be entered free of customs at the single port of Bristol.
We must probably ascribe to the secret practices of the Castilian diplomacy, the delays which attended the departure of the expedition ; which did not put to sea until the first days in the month of May, 1497, in a small ship manned by a crew of eighteen men, of whom one was a Burgundian, and one a Genoese; but the greater part were Englishmen from Bristol. It had returned by the beginning of August; for on the date of the 10th of this month, the king gave from his privy purse a gratuity of ten pounds sterling To hym that found the New Isle. Some days after, on the 23d of August, the Venetian merchant, Lorenzo Pasqualigo, sent from London to his brothers in Venice, what he had learned of the results of this voyage: John Cabot had found, at a dis- tance of seven hundred leagues in the west, a firm-land, along which ho had coasted for the space of three hundred leagues, not having met a living person at the points where he had landed, but still having observed there some traces of inhabitants, trees notched, and nets for catching game: on his return, he had seen on his right hand two islands, where, however, he had not wished to go on shore on account of the failure of his provisions : he had returned to Bristol after a voy- age of three months, having left in the lands which he had discovered a grand cross, with the banner of England and that of St. Mark of Venice.
What were these three hundred leagues of coast, thus placed under this two-fold British and Venetian protectorate? One might make this the object of a special study, comparing carefully with the map of Sebastian Cabot, naturally taken here as the standard of reference, the sketch, more or less rude, of the countries upon which, in the chart of the celebrated Spanish pilot Juan de la Cosa, of the date 1500, there floats a series of significant banners, accompanied in the east by the
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LETTER OF M. D'AVEZAC.
name Cabo de Ynglaterra, and in the west by the inscription Mar descubierta por Yngleses. It is, in short, in its whole extent, the same region which, thirty years later, was called by the Spaniards Tierra de Estecan Gomez.
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