domain, which cut the peninsula in two parts, stood three renowned
Italian cities: Florence, the capital of Tuscany, leading the world in
arts; Genoa, the home of Caboto and Columbus, teaching the world the
science of navigation; and Venice, mistress of the great trade route
between Europe and Asia, controlling the world's commerce.

Thus, in becoming a citizen of Venice, Giovanni Caboto the Genoese was
leaving the best home of scientific navigation for the best home of
sea-borne trade. His very name was no bad credential. Surnames often
come from nicknames; and for a Genoese to be called _Il Caboto_ was as
much as for an Arab of the Desert to be known to his people as The
Horseman. _Cabottággio_ now means no more than coasting trade. But
before there was any real ocean commerce it referred to the regular
sea-borne trade of the time; and Giovanni Caboto must have either upheld
an exceptional family tradition or struck out an exceptional line for
himself to have been known as John the Skipper among the many other
expert skippers hailing from the port of Genoa.

There was nothing strange in his being naturalized in Venice. Patriotism
of the kind that keeps the citizen under the flag of his own country
was hardly known outside of England, France, and Spain. Though the
Italian states used to fight each other, an individual Italian,
especially when he was a sailor, always felt at liberty to seek his
fortune in any one of them, or wherever he found his chance most
tempting. So the Genoese Giovanni became the Venetian Zuan without any
patriotic wrench. Nor was even the vastly greater change to plain John
Cabot so very startling. Italian experts entered the service of a
foreign monarch as easily as did the 'pay-fighting Swiss' or Hessian
mercenaries. Columbus entered the Spanish service under Ferdinand and
Isabella just as Cabot entered the English service under Henry VII.