their navigation southward.... Sebastian Cabot himself named those
lands Baccallaos, because that in the seas thereabout he found so
great multitudes of certain big fish much like unto tunnies (which the
inhabitants called Baccallaos) that they sometimes stayed his ships.
He found also the people of those regions covered with beasts' skins,
yet not without the use of reason. He saith also that there is great
plenty of bears in those regions, which used to eat fish. For,
plunging themselves into the water where they perceive a multitude of
those fish to lie, they fasten their claws in their scales, and so
draw them to land and eat them. So that, as he saith, the bears being
thus satisfied with fish, are not noisome to men."

Ramusio represents Sebastian Cabot as making the following statement:

"When my father departed from Venice many years since to dwell in
England, to follow the trade of merchandises, he took me with him to
the city of London while I was very young, yet having nevertheless
some knowledge of letters, of humanity, and of the sphere. And when my
father died, in that time when news were brought that Don Christopher
Colombus, the Genoese, had discovered the coasts of India, whereof was
great talk in all the Court of King Henry the Seventh, who then
reigned; in so much that all men, with great admiration, affirmed it
to be a thing more divine than human to sail by the west into the
east, where spices grow, by a way that was never known before; by
which fame and report there increased in my heart a great flame of
desire to attempt some notable thing. And understanding by reason of
the sphere that if I should sail by way of the north-west wind I
should by a shorter track come to India, I thereupon caused the King
to be advertised of my device, who immediately commanded two caravels
to be furnished with all things appertaining to the voyage, which was,