And now we may pass on to the consideration of the second voyage; and first among the writers, in order of time as also in order of importance, is Peter Martyr of Anghiera, who published his Decades of the New World in 1516.  Sebastian Cabot had then been in Spain for four years, high in office and in royal favor.  Peter Martyr was his “familiar friend and comrade,” and tells the Pope, to whom these Decades were addressed as letters, that he wrote from information derived from Cabot’s own lips.  Here, I venture to think, many of the writers on this subject have gone astray; for the whole question changes.  Martyr knows of only one voyage, and that was beyond doubt the voyage of 1498; he knows of only one discoverer, and that the man from whose lips he writes the narrative.  The landfall is far north, in a region of ice and perpetual daylight.  At the very outset the subject is stated to be “those northern seas,” and then Peter Martyr goes on to say that Sebastian Cabot furnished two ships at his own charges; and that, with three hundred men, he sailed toward the north pole, where he saw land, and that then he was compelled to turn westward; and after that he coasted to the south until he reached the latitude of Gibraltar; and that he was west of the longitude of Cuba.  In other words, he struck land far in the north, and from that point he sailed south along the coast as far as Cape Hatteras.  That Labrador was the landfall seems clear; for he met large masses of ice in the month of July.  These were not merely the bergs of the western ocean, but masses of field-ice, which compelled him to change his course from north to west, and finally to turn southward.  The same writer states that Cabot himself named a portion of the great land he coasted “Baccalaos,” because of the quantity of fish, which was so great that they hindered the sailing of his ships, and that these fishes were called baccalaos by the natives.  This statement has given rise to much dispute.  As to the quantity of fish, all succeeding writers concur that it was immense beyond conception; and probably the swarming of the salmon up the rivers of our Pacific coast may afford a parallel; but that Cabot did not so name the country is abundantly clear.  A very exhaustive note on the word will be found at page 131 of Dr. Bourinot’s Cape Breton.

Bearing in mind the preceding considerations, the study of the early maps will become profitable, and I would now direct attention to them to ascertain what light they may throw upon the landfall of John Cabot and the island of St. John opposite to it.  It must be remembered that John Cabot took the time to go on shore at his landfall, and planted the banners of England and St. Mark there.  At that time of year and in that latitude it was light at half-past three, but it was five when he saw land, and he had to reach it and perform the ceremonies appropriate for such occasions; so the island opposite could not be far away.  The island, then, will be useful to identify the landfall if we find it occurring frequently on the succeeding maps.