On This Occasion He Gave Us The Following Information.
[Footnote 6:
Hakluyt, III. 27. from the second volume of Ramusio.]
His father went many years since from Venice to England, where he
followed the profession of a merchant, taking this person his son along
with him to London, then very young, yet having received some tincture
of learning, and some knowledge of the sphere. His father died about the
time when news was spread abroad that Don Christopher Columbus, the
Genoese, had discovered the coasts of the Indies by sailing towards the
west, which was much admired and talked of at the court of King Henry
VII. then reigning in England, so that every one affirmed that it was
more attributable to divine inspiration than human wisdom, to have thus
sailed by the west unto the east, where spices grow, by a way never
known before. By these discourses the young man, Sebastian Cabot, was
strongly incited to perform some notable and similar action; and
conceiving by the study of the sphere that it would be a shorter route
for going to India, than that attempted by Columbus, to sail by the
north-west, he caused the king to be informed thereof, who accordingly
gave orders that he should be furnished with two ships, properly
provided in all things for the voyage. He sailed with these from England
in the beginning of summer 1496, if I rightly remember, shaping his
course to the north-west, not expecting to find any other land
intervening between and Cathay or Northern China. He was much
disappointed by falling in with land running toward the north, the coast
of which he sailed along to the lat. of 56 deg. N. and found it still a
continent. Finding the coast now, to turn towards the east, and
despairing to find the passage to India and Cathay of which he was in
search, he turned again and sailed down the coast towards the
equinoctial line, always endeavouring to find a passage westwards for
India, and came at length to that part of the continent which is now
called Florida[7]. And his victuals running short, he bore away for
England; where he found the country in confusion preparing for war with
Scotland, so that no farther attention was paid to his proposed
discoveries.
[Footnote 7: Florida is here to be taken in the extended sense as at
first applied to the whole eastern coast of North America, to the north
of the Gulf of Mexico. The commencement of this voyage appears to have
been in search of a north-west passage; but Sebastian must have gone far
above 56 deg. N. to find the land trending eastwards: He was probably
repelled by ice and cold weather. - E.]
He went afterwards into Spain, where he was taken into the service of
Ferdinand and Isabella, who furnished him with ships at their expence,
in which he went to discover the coast of Brazil, where he found a
prodigiously large river, now called the Rio de la Plata, or Silver
River, up which he sailed above 120 leagues, finding every where a good
country, inhabited by prodigious numbers of people, who flocked from
every quarter to view the ships with wonder and admiration.
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