foreign service for many years after this period, and that he was the only man in England at that time fully competent to conduct an expedition to America, it is likely that the Englishmen Hojeda saw were no other than Sebastian Cabot himself with his exploring party. Having been stopped the year before by the failure of provisions while sailing southward, it is natural to suppose that he would in a new expedition resume his former search, till at length he reached that part of the coast where Hojeda met with the party of Englishmen, and where the "great discoveries" mentioned in the Bristol manuscript were no doubt made. It is, however, a remarkable fact that while the name of Amerigo Vespucci, the pilot who accompanied Hojeda, is now for ever associated with the whole of that vast continent, no headland, cape, or bay has preserved the memory of Sebastian Cabot. But the mysterious disappearance of his "maps and discourses," which he had prepared for publication,[1] may account in a great measure for the name of Cabot having been unnoticed in connection with America, and may be adduced as a reason why doubts have so long existed as to his occupations between 1498 and 1512. Had these documents been preserved, they would assuredly have supplied abundant information on this point. Peter Martyr says,[2] that Cabot did not leave England until after the death of Henry VII.,*
- ↑ In a tract addressed to Sir Philip Sydney and published in 1582, Hakluyt says: "But, shortly, God willing, shall come out in print all his (Sebastian Cabot's) own mappes and discourses drawne and written by himselfe;" at the same time, stating that these were then in the "custody of Mr. William Worthington."
- ↑ Peter Martyr speaks of Cabot as "his very friend whom I use
