In the Proceedings of the Am. Antiq. Soc. for April, 1867, I called attention, in some notes on Cabot’s map, to the inadvertences of these distinguished historians; and, in a later paper by M. D’Avezac, printed in the Bulletin de la Soc. Géog., in Paris for 1869, and translated in the Doc. Hist. of Maine, i. 506, 507, he revises his opinion, and affirms his belief that the change of date from 1494, in Hakluyt’s first folio, to 1497 in that of 1600 was caused by a typographical error. [D’Avezac’s paper was entitled: Les navigations Terre-neuviennes de Jean et Sébastien Cabot—Lettre au Révérend Leonard Woods: and was also printed separately in Paris.—Ed.]
[87] [See the note on Molyneaux’s map, with a sketch of it, appended to the chapter on “Norumbega.”—Ed.]
[88] It has been suggested that Hakluyt had access to Cabot’s papers in possession of William Worthington, and that they revealed the true date. It is a pity he did not “make note of it” among his authorities. See R. H. Major’s True Date of the English Discovery, etc., London, 1870, originally printed in the Archæologia, xliii, 17.
The mention of the name of William Worthington, against whom Mr. Biddle has emphasized a suspicion of unjust dealing with Sebastian Cabot, reminds me of a remark of M. D’Avezac in speaking of the marriage of Cabot to Catherine Medrano,—that he suspected that Worthington, instead of being hostile to Cabot, was, on the contrary, bound to him by family ties. See Revue Critique, v. 268, 269.
[89] Page 511.
[90] Page 128.
[91] Mr. Major concludes his paper by producing incontestable evidence from the recently published Venetian and Spanish Calendars, to be adduced farther on, that the true date of discovery was 1497.
[92] See a more full analysis of this subject in Proceedings of the Am. Antiq. Soc. for April, 1867.
[93] See vol. i. 226, 274; ii. 243, 267; iii. 10; cf. Biddle, 184-187, 311, who doubts as to Cabot’s appointment as “grand pilot,” as asserted by Hakluyt. [Davis, in his World’s Hydrographical Descriptions, does not give him any official title in 1595. “Sebastian Gabota, an expert pilot, and a man reported of speciall judgment, who being that wayes imployed returned without successe.” Davis’s Voyages (Hakluyt Soc.), p. 195.—Ed.]
[94] The Legend no. xvii. of the map is copied from Chytræus into the text of the Tabularum Geog. Contractatrum of Peter Bertius, published in Latin and in French. In the Latin edition of 1602 or 1603, the second edition, the Legend is given on page 627, and in the French of 1617 on page 777. The text is ascribed to Jodocus Hondius, who died in 1612, says Lelewel, in his Géographie du Moyen Age. (Letter of J. Carson Brevoort.)