[248] Bernardo Buil, a Benedictine monk, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, in 1493, and returned to Spain in 1494.
[249] Archives of Simancas. Tratado con Inglaterra. Leg. ii. Calendar of letters, dispatches, and state papers. London, 1862. vol. i. pp. 176, 177.
[250] The fourteenth year of the reign of Henry VII. began August 21, 1498, and ended August 21, 1499.
[251] The Chronicle of England, from Brute vnto this present yeare of Christ 1580. By John Stow. London, 1580. p. 862.
Robert Fabian, from whose work Stow obtained the information concerning Caboto’s voyage, was the author of the “Chronicle of England and France,” or, as he called it, “The concordance of stories.” He was born in London about the year 1450. Besides being an alderman of the city, he was one of its sheriffs in 1493. He died in London in 1512, and was buried in St. Michael’s, Cornhill.
[252] “Quare coactus fuit, uti ait, vela vertere et occidentem isequ tetenditque tamen ad meridiem, littore sese incurvante, ut Herculei freti latitudine ferè gradus æquarit ad occidentemque profectus tantum est, ut Cubam insulam à læua longitudine graduum penè parem habuerit.”
The Strait of Gibraltar (Strait of Hercules) is in 36° north latitude.
[253] Demorgorgon, the spirit of the earth.
[254] The name bacallaos, or baccallaos, is evidently derived from the Greek word βάκὴλος, a large, lusty fellow. Names similar to this appellation were used by the Greeks as early as the third century of the Christian era. Athenæus, in his work entitled Δειπνοσοφισταί (the learned men at supper), presents this information respecting certain fish: “They say that they are usually caught in couples, and that one is always found following at the tail of the other; and, therefore, from the fact of one following close on the tail of the other, some ancients call men who are intemperate and libidinous by the same name.... Euthydemus, in his work on Cured Fish, says: ‘Some call this fish [the cod] the bacchus, and some the gelaria, and some the hake.’”—The Deipnosophists or banquet of the learned of Athenæus. Literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London, 1854. vol. ii. pp. 442, 496.
Great numbers of the common cod [morrhua vulgaris] are annually caught on the fishing-banks off the coast of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. This fish is very prolific. It is said that eight millions of eggs have been counted in the roe of a female cod. Cod are sometimes caught that weigh ninety pounds.