George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

[2] Hindostan by way of the Cape of Good Hope; in

Chap. I.} 1498.

August, Columbus discovered the firm land of South 1498. America, and the river Oronoco, which seemed to him to flow from some large empire, or perhaps even from the terrestrial paradise itself; and in the summer, Cabot, the youngest of them all, made known to the world the coast line of the present United States, as far as the entrance to the Chesapeake. The fame of Columbus was soon embalmed in the poetry of Tasso; De Gama is the hero of the national epic of Portugal; but the elder Cabot was so little celebrated, that even the reality of his voyage has been denied; and Sebastian derived neither benefit nor immediate renown from his expedition. His main object had been the discovery of a north-western passage to Asia, and in this respect his voyage was a failure; while Gama was cried up by all the world for having found the way by the south-east. For the next half century it was hardly borne in mind that the Venetian and his son had, in two successive years, reached the continent of North America, before Columbus came upon the low coast of Guiana. But England acquired through their energy such a right to North America, as this indisputable priority could confer. The successors of Henry VII. recognised the claims of Spain and Portugal, only so far as they actually occupied the territories to which they laid pretension; and, at a later day, the English parliament and the English courts derided a title, founded, not upon occupancy, but upon the award of a Roman pontiff.

The next years of the illustrious mariner, from whom England derived a claim to our shores, are involved in obscurity; but he soon conciliated regard by