Note 130 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

“John Cabot’s Voyage of 1497,” in Hist. Mag. xiii. 131 (March, 1868), with a section of the Cabot (Paris) map. See also “The Discovery of North America by John Cabot in 1497,” by Mr. Frederic Kidder, in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. (Oct. 1878), xxxii. 381 [who reproduces also a part of the same map, and gives a sketch-map marking Cabot’s track around the Gulf. He bases his argument partly on Pasqualigo’s statement that Cabot found the tides “slack,” and shows that the difference in their rise and fall in that region is small compared with what Cabot had been used to, at Bristol. In the confusion of the two Cabot voyages, which for a long while prevailed (see an instance in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. x. 383, under date, 1663), the track of his first voyage is often made to extend down the eastern seaboard of the present United States, and it is thus laid down on the map in Zurla’s Di Marco Polo e degli viaggiatori Veneziani, Venezia, 1818. Stevens, Hist. and Geog. Notes, does not allow that on either voyage the coast south of the St. Lawrence was seen; and urges that for some years the coast-line farther south was drawn from Marco Polo’s Asiatic coasts; and he contends for the “honesty” of the Portuguese Portolano of 1514, which leaves the coast from Nova Scotia to Charleston a blank, holding that this confirms his view. It may be a question whether it was honesty or ignorance. Dr. Hale, Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc. Oct. 21, 1871, gives a sketch-map to show the curious correspondence of the Asian and American coast lines. Observe it also in the Finæus map, already given.—Ed.]