for their treachery and cruelty by their thirst for knowledge and love of arts.  Him Soncino kept informed of all matters going on at London, and especially concerning matters of cosmography, to which the Duke was much devoted.  From his letters we are enabled to retrace the momentous voyage of the little Matthew of Bristol across the western ocean—­not the sunny region of steady trade-winds, by whose favoring influence Columbus was wafted to his destination, but the boisterous reaches of the northern Atlantic—­over that “still vexed sea” which shares with one or two others the reputation of being the most storm-tossed region in the world of ocean.  That the land discovered was supposed to be a part of Asia appears very clearly from the same letters.  It was in the territory of the Grand Cam.  The land was good and the climate temperate; and Cabot intended on his next voyage, after occupying that place, to proceed farther westward until he should arrive at the longitude of Japan, which island he evidently thought to be south of his landfall and near the equator.

It should be carefully noted that, in all the circumstances on record which are indisputably referable to this first voyage, nothing has been said of ice or of any notable extension of daylight.  These are the marks of the second voyage; for if anything unusual had existed in the length of the day it would have been at its maximum on Midsummer’s Day, June 24th, the day he made land.  Nothing is reported in these letters which indicates a high latitude.  Now Labrador is a cold, waste region of rocks, swamps, and mountains.  Even inside the Straits of Belle-Isle it is so barren and forbidding as to call forth Cartier’s oft-cited remark that “it was like the land God gave to Cain.”  The coast of Labrador is not the place to invite a second voyage, if it be once seen; but the climate of Cape Breton is very pleasant in early summer and the country is well wooded.

From the contemporary documents relating specially to the first voyage, it is beyond question that Cabot saw no human being on the coast, though he brought back evidences of their presence at some previous time.  It is beyond doubt, also, on the same authority, that the voyage lasted not longer than three months, and that provisions gave out, so that he had not time to land on the return voyage.  It was, in fact, a reconnoitring expedition to prepare the way for a greater effort, and establish confidence in the existence of land across the ocean easily reached from England.  The distance sailed is given by Soncino at four hundred leagues; but Pasqualigo, writing to Venice, gives it at seven hundred leagues, equivalent to two thousand two hundred twenty-six miles, which is very nearly the distance between Bristol and Cape Breton as now estimated.