Leaving
Flores, They Sailed So Far To The North-East, That They Came To Cape Clear
In The West Of
Ireland, where they met with a stiff western gale and yet a
smooth sea, whence they concluded that there must
Be land in that
direction by which the sea was sheltered from the effects of the west wind;
but it being then the month of August, they did not venture to proceed in
search of that supposed island, for fear of winter. This happened about
forty years before the discovery of the West Indies.
The foregoing account was confirmed to the admiral by the relation of a
mariner whom he met with at Port St Mary, who told him that, once in a
voyage to Ireland he saw that western land, which he then supposed to be a
part of Tartary stretching out towards the west, but could not come near
it on account of bad weather. But it is probable that this must have been
the land now called Bacallaos, or Newfoundland. This was farther
confirmed by what was related to him by one Peter de Velasco of Galicia,
whom he met with in the city of Murcia in Spain: who, in sailing for
Ireland, went so far to the north-west, that he discovered land far to the
west of Ireland; which he believes to have been the same which one
Femaldolmos endeavoured to discover in the following manner, as set down
in my fathers writings, that it may appear how some men build great and
important matters upon very slight foundations. Gonzalo Fernandez de
Oviedo, in his natural history of the Indies, says that the admiral had a
letter in which the Indies were described by one who had before discovered
them; which was by no means the case, but only thus: Vincent Diaz, a
Portuguese of Tavira, on his return from Guinea to the Tercera islands,
and having passed the island of Madeira, which he left to the east, saw,
or imagined that he saw something which he certainly concluded to be land.
On his arrival at Tercera, he told this to one Luke de Cazzana, a Genoese
merchant, his friend, and a very rich man, and endeavoured to persuade him
to fit out a vessel for the conquest of this place: This Cazzana agreed to,
and obtained a license from the king of Portugal for the purpose. He wrote
accordingly to his brother Francis de Cazzana, who resided at Seville, to
fit out a vessel with all expedition for Diaz; but Francis made light of
the matter, and Luke de Cazzana actually fitted out a vessel from Tercera,
in which the before named pilot sailed from 120 to 130 leagues, but all in
vain, for he found no land. Yet neither he nor his partner Cazzana
desisted from the enterprize till death closed their hopes. The before
mentioned Francis de Cazzana likewise informed the admiral, that he knew
two sons of the pilot who discovered the island of Tercera, named Michael
and Jasper Cortereal, who went several times in search of that land, and
at last perished one after the other in the year 1502, without having ever
been heard of since, as was well known to many credible persons.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 25 of 415
Words from 12930 to 13474
of 219607
