I have already stated that one of the motives, and perhaps the principal one, for establishing the West India Company was of a political nature. The destruction of Spain’s financial resources was to lead to an honorable and satisfactory peace with Holland. Spain relied for the sinews of war on its American colonies; and we must inquire how much of the information relating to location and extent of these colonies had reached the Dutch notwithstanding the Spanish efforts to suppress it.
Hakluyt says:[793] “The first discovery of these coasts (never heard of before) was well begun by John Cabot and Sebastian his son, who were the first finders out of all that great tract of land stretching from the Cape of Florida unto those Islands which we now call the Newfoundland, or which they brought and annexed to the Crown of England [1497].”
RIBERO’S MAP, 1529.
[This is a section of the Carta Universal of the Spanish cosmographer, Diego Ribero. It needs the following key:—
1. R. de St. iago.
2. C. de Arenas (Sandy Cape).
3. B. de S. Χρō-al.
4. B. de S. Atonio.