Note 8 — Chapter I

I might mention here an interesting map composed by the English merchant, Robert Thorne, while residing in Seville in Spain, in 1527, and sent, with a long discourse on cosmography, to Dr. Ley, English ambassador to Charles V. The map is very rude, and was first published with the discourse by Hakluyt in his little quarto in 1582. Along the line of the coast of Labrador is a Latin inscription of which the following is the English reading: “This land was first discovered by the English.” Thorne was very urgent—as well in his letter to Dr. Ley as in a letter to the king, Henry VIII., also published by Hakluyt—that the English should engage in those maritime discoveries to the west which the Spaniards and the Portuguese were monopolizing.