All these circumstances concerning the first voyage are derived from John Cabot’s own reports, and are extracted from documents dated previous to the return of the second expedition, and therefore are, of necessity, free from admixture with extraneous incidents.  Antonio Galvano, an experienced Portuguese sailor and cosmographer, writing in 1563, like the others, knows of one voyage only, which he fixes in 1496.  He interweaves, like them, in his narrative many circumstances of the second voyage, but it is important to note that from some independent source is given the landfall at 45 deg., the latitude very nearly of Cape Breton, on the island of Cape Breton.  Another point is also recorded in the letters that, on the return voyage, Cabot passed two islands to the right, which the shortness of his provisions prevented him from examining.  This note should not be considered identical with the statement recorded by Soncino in his first letter, for this last writer evidently means to indicate the land which Cabot found and examined; he says that Cabot discovered two large and fertile islands, but the two islands of Pasqualigo were passed without examination.  They were probably the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon; but that John Cabot had no idea of a northward voyage at that time in his mind would appear from his intention to sail farther to the east on his next voyage until he reached the longitude of Cipango.  Moreover, the reward recorded in the King’s privy-purse accounts “to hym that founde the new ile,” and the wording, thrice repeated, of the second letters-patent, “the land and isles of late found by the said John,” indicate that it was not at that time known whether the mainland of Cathay had been reached, or, as in the discoveries of Columbus, islands upon the coast of Asia.

From the preceding narrative, based solely upon documents written within twelve months of the event—­which documents are records of statements taken from the lips of John Cabot, the chief actor, at the very time of his return from the first voyage—­it will, I trust, appear that in 1497, at a time of year when the ice was not clear from the coasts of Labrador, he discovered a part of America in a temperate climate, and that this was done without the name of Sebastian Cabot once coming to the surface, excepting when it appears in the patent of 1496, together with the names of Lewis and Sancio, his brothers.  While the circumstances recorded are incompatible with a landfall at Labrador, they do not exclude the possibility of a landfall on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, which is so varied in its character as to correspond with almost any conditions likely to be found in a landfall on the American coast; but inasmuch as, from other reasons, it will, I think, appear that the landfall was at Cape Breton, it will be a shorter process to prove by a positive argument where it was than to show by a negative argument where it was not.