get an Archbishopric. But I have thought that the benefices which your
Excellency has in store for me are a surer thing."

To those who, in the teeth of contemporary evidence, prefer the claims
of Sebastian, the following extracts may be offered; the first from
Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, who wrote in the early sixteenth century, the
second from Ramusio. Martyr writes:

"These north seas have been searched by one Sebastian Cabot, a
Venetian born, whom, being yet but in matter an infant, his parents
carried with them into England, having occasion to resort thither for
trade of merchandises, as is the manner of the Venetians to leave no
part of the world unsearched to obtain riches. He therefore furnished
two ships in England at his own charges; and, first, with 300 men,
directed his course so far towards the North Pole, that even in the
month of July he found monstrous heaps of ice swimming in the sea, and
in manner continual daylight, yet saw he the land in that tract free
from ice, which had been molten by heat of the sun. Thus, seeing such
heaps of ice before him, he was enforced to turn his sails and follow
the west, so coasting still by the shore he was thereby brought so far
into the south, by reason of the land bending so much southward, that
it was there almost equal in latitude with the sea called Fretum
Herculeum [Straits of Gibraltar], having the North Pole elevate in
manner in the same degree. He sailed likewise in this tract so far
toward the west that he had the Island of Cuba [on] his left hand in
manner in the same degree of longitude. As he travelled by the coasts
of this great land, which he named Baccallaos [cod-fish country], he
saith that he found the like course of the water towards the west
[_i.e._ as before described by Martyr], but the same to run more
softly and gently than the swift waters which the Spaniards found in