Cabot in England.
Cabot's telling of a new land, his supposing it the empire of the Great Khan, his tales of the wonderful fishing ground thereabouts, where the water was so dense with fish that his vessels were impeded, and his expectation of finding the land of spices if he went southward from the region of his landfall, were all stories calculated to incite wonder and speculation. It was not strange, then, that England found she had her new sea-hero, as Spain had hers in Columbus; that the king gave him money and a pension; and that, conscious of a certain dignity, Cabot went about the city, drawing the attention of the curious by reason of the fine silks in which he arrayed himself.
Spain jealous of England.
Cabot had no sooner returned than Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish envoy in London, again entered a protest, and gave notice to the English king that the land which had been discovered belonged to his master. There is some evidence that Spain kept close watch on the country at the north through succeeding years, and even intended settlement.
Cabot in Seville?
This Spanish ambassador wrote home from London, July 25, 1498, that after his first voyage, Cabot had been in Seville and Lisbon. This renders somewhat probable the suspicion that he may have had conferences with La Cosa and Columbus.
Cabot's charts.
That John Cabot, on returning from his first voyage, produced a chart which he had made, and that on this and on a solid globe, also of his construction, he had laid down what he considered to be the region he had reached, now admit of no doubt. Foreign residents at the English court reported such facts to the courts of Italy and of Spain. In the map of La Cosa (1500), we find what is considered a reflex of this Cabot chart, in the words running along a stretch of the northeast coast of Asia, which announce the waters adjacent as those visited by the English, and a neighboring headland as the Cape of the English. Even La Cosa's use of the Cabot map was lost sight of before long, and this record of La Cosa remained unknown till Humboldt discovered the map in Paris, in 1832, in the library of Baron Walckenaer, whence it passed in 1853 into the royal museum at Madrid. The views of Cabot respecting this region seem to have been soon obscured by the more current charts showing the voyages of the Cortereals, when the Cape of the English readily disappeared in the "Cabo de Portogesi," a forerunner, very likely, of what we know to-day as Cape Race.
1497-98. February. The second Cabot voyage.