[Illustration: Map showing the city of Venice, Italy, where John
Cabot had lived.]

Early one bright morning toward the last of June, 1497, they saw land
in the west. It was probably Cape Breton[4] Island, a part of Nova
Scotia.[5] John Cabot named it "The Land First Seen." Up to this time
Columbus had discovered nothing but the West India Islands, but John
Cabot now saw the continent of North America; no civilized man[6]
had ever seen it before. There it lay, a great, lonely land, shaggy
with forests, with not a house or a human being in sight.

[Illustration: Map showing Nova Scotia.]

[Footnote 1: Cabot (Cab'ot).]

[Footnote 2: See map in paragraph 62.]

[Footnote 3: Sebastian (Se-bast'yan).]

[Footnote 4: Breton (Bret'on).]

[Footnote 5: Nova Scotia (No'vah Sko'she-a).]

[Footnote 6: The Northmen: an uncivilized people of Norway and
Denmark discovered the continent of North America about five hundred
years before Cabot did. Nothing came of this discovery, and when
Cabot sailed, no one seems to have known anything about what the
Northmen had done so long before.]