On This Occasion He Gave Us The Following Information.
[Footnote 6:
Hakluyt, III. 27. from the second volume of Ramusio.]
His father went many years since from Venice to England, where he
followed the profession of a merchant, taking this person his son along
with him to London, then very young, yet having received some tincture
of learning, and some knowledge of the sphere. His father died about the
time when news was spread abroad that Don Christopher Columbus, the
Genoese, had discovered the coasts of the Indies by sailing towards the
west, which was much admired and talked of at the court of King Henry
VII. then reigning in England, so that every one affirmed that it was
more attributable to divine inspiration than human wisdom, to have thus
sailed by the west unto the east, where spices grow, by a way never
known before. By these discourses the young man, Sebastian Cabot, was
strongly incited to perform some notable and similar action; and
conceiving by the study of the sphere that it would be a shorter route
for going to India, than that attempted by Columbus, to sail by the
north-west, he caused the king to be informed thereof, who accordingly
gave orders that he should be furnished with two ships, properly
provided in all things for the voyage. He sailed with these from England
in the beginning of summer 1496, if I rightly remember, shaping his
course to the north-west, not expecting to find any other land
intervening between and Cathay or Northern China.
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