Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Navigations. Three volumes published at Venice in 1550, 1559, and 1556 respectively.
(α) In vol. i occurs the following relation by a ‘Mantuan gentleman’,[[59]] whose name has never been discovered (Eden falsely identified him with Galeacius Butrigarius, Papal Legate in Spain), speaking to a company of Venetians in the house of Hieronimus Fracastor:
‘Finding himself in the city of Seville a few years ago, and desiring to know about those navigations from the Castillians, he was told that a distinguished Venetian was there who had knowledge of them, named Sebastian Caboto, who knew how to make marine charts with his own hands, and understood the art of navigation better than any one else.... Caboto said: ... “My father died at the time when the news came that the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, had discovered the coast of the Indies, and it was much discussed at the court of King Henry VII, who then reigned, saying that it was a thing more divine than human to have found that way never before known to go to the east where the spices grow. In this way, a great and heartfelt desire arose in me to achieve some signal enterprise. Knowing by a study of the sphere that if I should navigate to the west, I should find a shorter route to the Indies, I quickly made known my thought to his Majesty the King, who was well content, and fitted out two caravels for me with everything needful. This was in 1496, in the commencement of the summer. I began to navigate towards the west, expecting not to find land until I came to Cathay, whence I could go on to the Indies. But at the end of some days I discovered that the land trended northwards, to my great disappointment; so I sailed along the coast to see if I could find some point where the land turned, until I reached the height of 56 degrees under our pole, but finding that the land turned eastward, I despaired of finding an opening. I turned to the right to examine again to the southward, always with the object of finding a passage to the Indies, and I came to that part which is now called Florida. Being in want of victuals, I was obliged to return thence to England, where I found great popular tumults among the rebels, and a war with Scotland. So that there was no chance of further navigation to those parts being considered, and I therefore went to Spain to the Catholic King and Queen Isabella, who, having heard what I had done, took me into their service, and provided for me well, sending me on a voyage of discovery to the coast of Brazil. I found a very wide river, now called La Plata....”
(β) In the preface to the third volume, Ramusio gives the following note on Sebastian Cabot. From Hakluyt’s translation.[[60]]
‘It is not yet thoroughly known whether the lands set in fiftie degrees of latitude to the north be separated and divided by the sea as islands, and whether by that way one may goe by sea unto the country of Cathaia: as many yeeres past it was written unto me by Sebastian Gabotto, our countrey man a Venetian, a man of great experience, and very rare in the art of navigation and the knowledge of cosmographie, who sayled along and beyond the land of New France at the charges of King Henry the seventh, King of England: and hee advertised mee that, having sailed a long time West and by North, beyond those Ilands unto the latitude of 67 degrees and an halfe, under the North pole, and at the 11 day of June, finding still the open sea without any manner of impediment, he thought verily by that way to have passed on still the way to Cathaia, which is in the East, and would have done it if the mutinie of the ship master and the mariners had not hindered him and made him returne homewards from that place.’
André Thevet, Les Singularités de la France Antarctique, Antwerp, 1558. Thevet reproduces the outline of previous accounts, and adds that Cabot landed three hundred men at some undefined place in the north, to found a colony. They nearly all perished of cold:
‘Vray est qu’il mist bien trois cens hommes en terre, du coste d’Irelande au Nort, ou le froid fist mourir presque toute sa compagnie, encores que ce fust au moys de Juillet.’
Jean Ribault,[[61]] writing in 1562, mentions 1498 as the date of Sebastian Cabot’s voyage.
Richard Eden, Decades of the New World, 1555, preface, leaf C 1.
‘But Cabot touched only in the north corner and most barbarous part thereof, from whence he was repulsed with ice in the month of July.’