to exclude competition, and to exhort good subjects of the Crown to help
the Cabots in every possible way. This first of all English documents
connected with America ends with these words: _Witnesse our Selfe at
Westminster, the Fifth day of March, in the XI yeere of our reigne.
HENRY R._

* * * * *

_To sayle to all Partes of the East, of the West, and of the North_. The
pointed omission of the word South made it clear that Henry had no
intention of infringing Spanish rights of discovery. Spanish claims,
however, were based on the Pope's division of all the heathen world and
were by no means bounded by any rights of discovery already acquired.

Cabot left Bristol in the spring of 1497, a year after the date of his
patent, not with the 'five shippes' the King had authorized, but in the
little _Matthew_, with a crew of only eighteen men, nearly all
Englishmen accustomed to the North Atlantic. The _Matthew_ made Cape
Breton, the easternmost point of Nova Scotia, on the 24th of June, the
anniversary of St. John the Baptist, now the racial fête-day of the
French Canadians. Not a single human inhabitant was to be seen in this
wild new land, shaggy with forests primeval, fronted with bold, scarped
shores, and beautiful with romantic deep bays leading inland, league
upon league, past rugged forelands and rocky battlements keeping guard
at the frontiers of the continent. Over these mysterious wilds Cabot
raised St. George's Cross for England and the banner of St. Mark in
souvenir of Venice. Had he now reached the fabled islands of the West or
discovered other islands off the eastern coast of Tartary? He did not
know. But he hurried back to Bristol with the news and was welcomed by
the King and people. A Venetian in London wrote home to say that 'this