The Dawn of Canadian History by Stephen Leacock (top android ebook reader txt) 📖

about the voyage, to Cabot and his men would belong the signal honour of having been the first Europeans, since the Norsemen, to set foot on the mainland of North America. Without doubt they were the first to unfurl the flag of England, and to erect the cross upon soil which afterwards became part of British North America. But this is not all. It is likely that Cabot reached a point far south of Labrador. His supposed sailing westward carried him in reality south of the latitude of Ireland. He makes no mention of the icebergs which any voyager must meet on the Labrador coast from June to August. His account of a temperate climate suitable for growing dye-wood, of forest trees, and of a country so fair that it seemed the gateway of the enchanted lands of the East, is quite unsuited to the bare and forbidding aspect of Labrador. Cape Breton island was probably the place of Cabot's landing. Its balmy summer climate, the abundant fish of its waters, fit in with Cabot's experiences. The evidence from maps, one of which was made by Cabot's son Sebastian, points also to Cape Breton as the first landing-place of English sailors in America.

There is no doubt of the stir made by Cabot's discovery on his safe return to England. He was in London by August of 1497, and he became at once the object of eager curiosity and interest. 'He is styled the Great Admiral,' wrote a Venetian resident in London, 'and vast honour is paid to him. He dresses in silk, and the English run after him like mad people.' The sunlight of royal favour broke over him in a flood: even Henry VII proved generous. The royal accounts show that, on August 10, 1497, the king gave ten pounds 'to him that found the new isle.' A few months later the king granted to his 'well-beloved John Cabot, of the parts of Venice, an annuity of twenty pounds sterling,' to be paid out of the customs of the port of Bristol. The king, too, was lavish in his promises of help for a new expedition. Henry's imagination had evidently been fired with the idea of an Oriental empire. A contemporary writer tells us that Cabot was to have ten armed ships. At Cabot's request, the king conceded to him all the prisoners needed to man this fleet, saving only persons condemned for high treason. It is one of the ironies of history that on the first pages of its annals the beautiful new world is offered to the criminals of Europe.

During the winter that followed, John Cabot was the hero of the hour. Busy preparations went on for a new voyage. Letters patent were issued giving Cabot power to take any six ships that he liked from the ports of the kingdom, paying to their owners the same price only as if taken for the king's service. The 'Grand Admiral' became a person of high importance. On one friend he conferred the sovereignty of an island; to others he made lavish promises; certain poor friars who offered to embark on his coming voyage were to be bishops over the heathen of the new land. Even the merchants of London ventured to send out goods for trade, and brought to Cabot 'coarse cloth, caps, laces, points, and other trifles.'

The second expedition sailed from the port of Bristol in May of 1498. John Cabot and his son Sebastian were in command; of the younger brothers we hear no more. But the high hopes of the voyagers were doomed to disappointment. On arriving at the coast of America Cabot's ships seem first to have turned towards the north. The fatal idea, that the empires of Asia might be reached through the northern seas already asserted its sway. The search for a north-west passage, that will-o'-the-wisp of three centuries, had already begun. Many years later Sebastian Cabot related to a friend at Seville some details regarding this unfortunate attempt of his father to reach the spice islands of the East. The fleet, he said, with its three hundred men, first directed its course so far to the north that, even in the month of July, monstrous heaps of ice were found floating on the sea. 'There was,' so Sebastian told his friend, 'in a manner, continual daylight.' The forbidding aspect of the coast, the bitter cold of the northern seas, and the boundless extent of the silent drifting ice, chilled the hopes of the explorers. They turned towards the south. Day after day, week after week, they skirted the coast of North America. If we may believe Sebastian's friend, they reached a point as far south as Gibraltar in Europe. No more was there ice. The cold of Labrador changed to soft breezes from the sanded coast of Carolina and from the mild waters of the Gulf Stream. But of the fabled empires of Cathay and Cipango, and the 'towns and castles' over which the Great Admiral was to have dominion, they saw no trace. Reluctantly the expedition turned again towards Europe, and with its turning ends our knowledge of what happened on the voyage.

That the ships came home either as a fleet, or at least in part, we have certain proof. We know that John Cabot returned to Bristol, for the ancient accounts of the port show that he lived to draw at least one or two instalments of his pension. But the sunlight of royal favour no longer illumined his path. In the annals of English history the name of John Cabot is never found again.

The son Sebastian survived to continue a life of maritime adventure, to be counted one of the great sea-captains of the day, and to enjoy an honourable old age. In the year 1512 we hear of him in the service of Ferdinand of Spain. He seems to have won great renown as a maker of maps and charts. He still cherished the idea of reaching Asia by way of the northern seas of America. A north-west expedition with Sebastian in command had been decided upon, it is said, by Ferdinand, when the death of that illustrious sovereign prevented the realization of the project. After Ferdinand's death, Cabot fell out with the grandees of the Spanish court, left Madrid, and returned for some time to England. Some have it that he made a new voyage in the service of Henry VIII, and sailed through Hudson Strait, but this is probably only a confused reminiscence, handed down by hearsay, of the earlier voyages. Cabot served Spain again under Charles V, and made a voyage to Brazil and the La Plata river. He reappears later in England, and was made Inspector of the King's Ships by Edward VI. He was a leading spirit of the Merchant Adventurers who, in Edward's reign, first opened up trade by sea with Russia.

The voyages of the Bristol traders and the enterprise of England by no means ended with the exploits of the Cabots. Though our ordinary history books tell us nothing more of English voyages until we come to the days of the great Elizabethan navigators, Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins, and to the planting of Virginia, as a matter of fact many voyages were made under Henry VII and Henry VIII. Both sovereigns seem to have been anxious to continue the exploration of the western seas, but they had not the good fortune again to secure such master-pilots as John and Sebastian Cabot.

In the first place, it seems that the fishermen of England, as well as those of the Breton coast, followed close in the track of the Cabots. As soon as the Atlantic passage to Newfoundland had been robbed of the terrors of the unknown, it was not regarded as difficult. With strong east winds a ship of the sixteenth century could make the run from Bristol or St Malo to the Grand Banks in less than twenty days. Once a ship was on the Banks, the fish were found in an abundance utterly unknown in European waters, and the ships usually returned home with great cargoes. During the early years of the sixteenth century English, French, and Portuguese fishermen went from Europe to the Banks in great numbers. They landed at various points in Newfoundland and Cape Breton, and became well acquainted with the outline of the coast. It was no surprise to Jacques Cartier, for instance, on his first voyage, to find a French fishing vessel lying off the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. But these fishing crews thought nothing of exploration. The harvest of the sea was their sole care, and beyond landing to cure fish and to obtain wood and water they did nothing to claim or conquer the land.

There were, however, efforts from time to time to follow up the discoveries of the Cabots. The merchants of Bristol do not seem to have been disappointed with the result of the Cabot enterprises, for as early as in 1501 they sent out a new expedition across the Atlantic. The sanction of the king was again invoked, and Henry VII granted letters patent to three men of Bristol—Richard Warde, Thomas Ashehurst, and John Thomas—to explore the western seas. These names have a homely English sound; but associated with them were three Portuguese—John Gonzales, and two men called Fernandez, all of the Azores, and probably of the class of master-pilots to which the Cabots and Columbus belonged. We know nothing of the results of the expedition, but it returned in safety in the same year, and the parsimonious king was moved to pay out five pounds from his treasury 'to the men of Bristol that found the isle.'

Francis Fernandez and John Gonzales remained in the English service and became subjects of King Henry. Again, in the summer of 1502, they were sent out on another voyage from Bristol. In September they brought their ships safely back, and, in proof of the strangeness of the new lands they carried home 'three men brought out of an Iland forre beyond Irelond, the which were clothed in Beestes Skynnes and ate raw fflesh and were rude in their demeanure as Beestes.' From this description (written in an old atlas of the time), it looks as if the Fernandez expedition had turned north from the Great Banks and visited the coast where the Eskimos were found, either in Labrador or Greenland. This time Henry VII gave Fernandez and Gonzales a pension of ten pounds each, and made them 'captains' of the New Found Land. A sum of twenty pounds was given to the merchants of Bristol who had accompanied them. We must remember that at this time the New Found Land was the general name used for all the northern coast of America.

There is evidence that a further expedition went out from Bristol in 1503, and still another in 1504. Fernandez and Gonzales, with two English associates, were again the leaders. They were to have a monopoly of trade for forty years, but were cautioned not to interfere with the territory of the king of Portugal. Of the fate of these enterprises nothing is known.

By the time of Henry VIII, who began to reign in 1509, the annual fishing fleet of the English which sailed to the American coast had become important. As early as in 1522, a royal ship of war was sent to the mouth of the English Channel to protect the 'coming home of the New Found Island's fleet.' Henry VIII and his minister, Cardinal Wolsey, were evidently anxious to go on with the work of the previous reign, and especially to enlist the wealthy merchants and trade companies of London in the cause of western exploration. In 1521 the cardinal proposed to the Livery Companies of London—the name given to the trade organizations of the merchants—that they should send out five ships on a voyage into the New Found Land. When the merchants seemed disinclined to make