While these events were occurring, Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese navigator, had reached Calicut, in the East Indies, by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, and traversing the Indian Ocean. But Columbus still persevered in his determination to reach Asia by a western route. He induced Isabella to fit out a fourth expedition for him, and on the 9th of May, 1502, he sailed for Hispaniola. After many troubles and hardships, he returned to Spain in 1504. His patron and best friend, the queen, died that same year. Old age had made its deep furrows, and, in the midst of disappointment and neglect, the great discoverer died on the 20th of May, 1506, at the age of seventy. He never realized his grand idea of reaching India by a western route. The honor of that achievement was reserved for the expedition of Magellan, fourteen years after the death of Columbus. That navigator passed through the straits which bear his name, at the southern extremity of our continent, and launched boldly out upon the broad Pacific. He died on the ocean, but his vessels reached the Philippine Islands, near the coast of India, in safety. Magellan gave the tame of Pacific to the pleasant ocean over which he was sailing. {xxvii}many adventurers offered their services to sovereigns and men of wealth. Almost simultaneously, Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, and Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, sailed for the lands discovered by Columbus; the former under the auspices, of Henry the Seventh of England, and the latter in the employment of Spanish merchants, with the sanction of Ferdinand. Cabot's father was an Italian, and had been long a resident of Bristol, then the chief commercial mart of England. The Northwestern seas were often traversed as far as Iceland by the Bristol mariners, and they had probably extended their voyages westward to Greenland in their fishing enterprises. Cabot seems to have been familiar with those seas, and the English merchants had great confidence in his abilities. He obtained a commission from Henry the Seventh, similar, in its general outline, to that given to Columbus by Ferdinand and Isabella. It empowered him and his three sons, their heirs or deputies, to discover and settle unknown lands in the Eastern, Northern, or Western seas, such lands to be taken possession of in the name of the King of England. He fitted out two vessels at his own expense, which were freighted by merchants of London and Bristol; and it was stipulated that, in lieu of all customs and imposts, Cabot was to pay to the King one fifth part of all the gains.
Cabot's son, Sebastian, a talented young man of only twenty years, with about three hundred men, sailed from harbor of Bristol in May, 1497. He directed his course to the northwest, until he reached the fifty-eighth degree of north latitude, when floating ice and intense cold induced him to steer to the southwest. Fair winds produced a rapid voyage, and he discovered land on the twenty-fourth of June, which he called Prima Vista, because it was his first view of a new region. The exact point of this first discovery is not certainly known; some supposing it to have been on the coast of Labrador, and others the Island of Newfoundland or the peninsula of Nova Scotia.
He touched at other points, but did not attempt a settlement: the climate seemed too rigorous, the people too fierce, and he returned to Bristol.
Cabot made arrangements for a February, 1498 second voyage. He did not go in person, but fitted out vessels for the purpose. His son, Sebastian, was placed at the head of the expedition, and in May, 1498, the month in which De Gama reached Calicut, in the East Indies, byway of the Cape of Good Hope, he sailed for the New World with several ships. He visited the region first discovered by his father and himself, and called it Newfoundland. It was not rich in gold and spices, but its shoals abounded with vast schools of codfish; and within a few years after his return to England a permanent fishery was established there. Cabot sailed along the whole coast of the present United States, beginning at latitude fifty-six degrees, and terminating at about thirty-six degrees, or Albemarle Sound. His provisions ailing, he returned to England. He made another voyage in 1517, as far south as the {xxviii}Brazils; but failing to discover a western passage to the East Indies, he again returned to England. *
