Days of the Discoverers

tent," said Hugh Thorne of Bris

he stormed on, "Here have we better fleeces than Spain, better wheat than France, finer cattle than the Netherlands, the

m for all to work and all to get reward for their labor. But so long as the English merchant

all the Hanse merchants by one another, but our English go every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. I speak

his guest to the door. When he entered again his small private ro

solemnly, "vat is

of door and set the bandog to guard it; thou art locked out though the door be wide open, seest thou? And when I forbid thee to pick up the plums that fall on the grass from the Frenchman's damson tree, they are as safe as if I locked them in the dresser here, are they not? So

inst his father's shoulder. "When I am a great merchant," he an

God grant thee thy wish, little one," he said. And Sebastian, with a sh

and had now lived for many years in Bristol, felt sometimes that the life of

han a little of the sea to win that title. He had made a place for himself in Venice as Zuan Gaboto, and now he was a known and respected man in the second greatest seaport of England, with a house in

he markets of more than a hundred towns. Their grim stone buildings rose like a fort commanding London Bridge, and they paid less both in duties and customs than English merchants did. They employed no English ships, and could underbuy and undersell the English manufacturer and the English trader. Their men were all bachelors, with no families to found or houses to keep up in England. The farmer might get half price for his wool

bus while the older brother was still haunting the court of Castile with his unfulfilled plans, and had gone so far as to tell the Genoese captain to bring his brother Christopher to England that he might talk with him. Had it not been for Queen Isabella's impulsive decision England instead of Spain might have made the lucky

regions in the eastern, western or northern seas; and, as vassals of the King, to occupy the territories tha

other way of getting. The year before he had arranged to have Prince Arthur, the heir to his throne, marry the fourth daughter of the King of Aragon, Catherine, then a little Princess of eleven. Prince Arthur died while still a boy, and Catherine became the first wife of Henry, afterward Henry VIII. With a Spanish Princess as queen of England, there might be

f John Cabot with his nineteen-year-old son Sebastian and a crew of eighteen-nearly all Englishmen, used to the North Atlantic. The King's permission was for five ships, b

se hordes had nearly overrun Eastern Europe in times not so very long ago. The adventures of Marco Polo the Venetian, in a great book sent to Cabot by his wife's father, had been the fairy-tale of Sebastian and his brothers from the time they were old enough to understand a story. In this book it was written how Marco Polo and his companions passed through utterly uninhabited wilds in the Great Khan's empire, and afterward

n traffic. The sun blazed hot and clear, but the inquisitive noses of the crew scented no cinnamon, cloves or ginger in the air. All of these, according to Marco Polo, were in the wilderness he crossed, and also great rivers. On crossing o

ater-supply had given out. Sebastian and a crew of the younger men tumbled into a boat, cross-bow and cutlass at hand, and went

lph Erlandsson, who was a native of Stavanger. Sebastian, who was ahead, presently came upon signs of human life. A sapling, bent down and held by a rude contrivance of deerhide thong and stakes, was attached to a noose so ingeniously hidden that the young leader nearly stepped into it. He took it off the tree and looked about him. A minute later, from one side and to the r

strat

s attached to a noose ing

ly could not be Cipangu or Cathay with their seaports and gilded temples. Whatever else it was, it was a land of wild people, savage hunters. John Cabot l

yaging in unknown seas. August of that year found the two Cabots at Westminster with their story and their handful of forest tro

ingers, and ate a little handful of the wintergreen berries and young leaves. Their pungen

he remarked at last, "is

answered John

ities back into the wallet that had held them, "that this

atter of fact there

at our good Captain says. If, as you say, Spain claims this landfall, we willingly make over to you our-ahem!-share of the emol

ned again to

waters? Bacalao-er-that is cod, is it not? Now it seems to me that our men of Bristol can go a-fishing on those banks without interference from the Hanse merchants, and we shall be less dependent on-foreign aid, for the victualing of our tables. And there may be some way to Asia through these Northern seas-

of John Cabot. In the accounts of his trea

on of ￡10 to him tha

of little fishing boats, from Bristol, Brittany, Lisbon, Rye, and the Vizcayan ports on the north of Spain, crept across the gray seas to fish for cod. They held no patent and carried no guns, but they made a floating city off the Grand Banks for a brief season, settling their own disputes. The people at home found salt fish good cheap and wholesome. When Sebastian told the Bristol folk that the fish were so thick in these new seas tha

of Peru. But for orders from Spain, where Pizarro had secured the governorship of that land, Cabot might have been its conqueror. In 1548, after some years spent in Spain as pilot major, he came back to England, where he was appointed to the position of superintendent of naval affairs. It was his work to examine and license pilots, and make charts and maps, and some ten years later he died, having founded the company of Merchant Adventurers in 1553. This company was entitle

o

e in welding English trade into a company to be guided by the best traditions. For the first time captains were required to keep a log, and this one thing, by putting on record every

r of the master and pilot of every ship to be put in writing; the captain-general assembling the masters together once every weeke (if winde and weather shall serve) to conferre all the observations and notes of the said ships, to the intent it may appeare wherein the notes do agree and wherein the

or ungodly talk to be suffered in the company of any ship, neither dicing, tabling, nor other divelish games to be permit

ovoke them by any distance, laughing, contempt, or such like; but to u

e navy not yet born. There was no British navy in the modern sense until a hundred years after Cabot's day. In time of war the King impressed all suitable ships into his service, if they were not freely offered by private owners. In time of peace the monarch wa

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