Don Pedro de Ayala, joint Spanish ambassador at London, wrote, on July 25, 1498, to his sovereigns that he had procured and would send a copy of John Cabot’s chart of his first voyage.  This map of Juan de la Cosa is evidence that Ayala fulfilled his promise.  It is a manuscript map made at the end of the year 1500, by the eminent Biscayan pilot, who, if not the equal of Columbus in nautical and cosmographical knowledge, was easily the second to him.  Upon it there is a continuous coast line from Labrador to Florida, showing that the claim made by Sebastian Cabot of having coasted from a region of ice and snow to the latitude of Gibraltar was accepted as true by La Cosa, whatever later Spanish writers may have said.  Recent writers of authority have arrived at the conclusion that, immediately after Columbus and Cabot had opened the way, many independent adventurers visited the western seas; for there are a number of geographical facts recorded on the earliest charts not easy to account for on any other hypothesis.  Dr. Justin Winsor shows that La Cosa, and others of the great sailors of the earliest years of discovery, soon recognized that they had encountered a veritable barrier to Asia, consisting of islands, or an island of continental size, through which they had to find a passage to the golden East.  Their views were not, however, generally accepted.

That La Cosa based the northern part of his map upon Cabot’s discoveries is demonstrated by the English flags marked along the coast and the legend “Mar descubierto por Ingleses,” because no English but the Cabot expeditions had been there; and what is evidently intended for Cape Race is called “Cavo de Ynglaterra.”  The English flags mark off the coast from that cape to what may be considered as Cape Hatteras.  Cabot, as before stated, confidently expected to reach Cathay.  He sailed for that as his objective point, and he was looking for a broad western ocean, so that narrow openings were to him simply bays of greater or less depth.  The sailors of those early voyages coasted from headland to headland, as plainly appears from many of the maps upon which the recesses of the sinuosities of the coast are not completed lines, and it must be borne in mind that in sailing between Newfoundland and Cape Breton the bold and peculiar contours of both can be seen at the same time.  This is possible in anything like clear weather, but, in the bright weather of Midsummer Day, Cape Ray would necessarily have been seen from St. Paul’s, and the opening might well have been taken for a deep indentation of the coast.  Between “Cavo descubierto” and “Cavo St. Jorge” such an indentation is shown on the map, but the line is closed, showing that Cabot did not sail through.