Thomas Wentworth Higginson, A book of American explorers

John Baptista Ramusius, in his Preface to the third volume of the Navigations, writeth thus of Sebastian Gabot¹ :

In the latter part of this volume are put certain relations of John De Verarzana,² a Florentine, and of a great captain, a Frenchman, and the two voyages of Jaques Cartier, a Briton,³ who sailed into the land set in fifty degrees of latitude to the north, which is called New France: and the which lands hitherto it is not thoroughly known whether they do join with the firm land of Florida and Nova Hispania, or whether they be separated and divided all by the Sea as Islands: and whether by that way one may go by sea into the country of Cathaio:⁴ as many years past it was written unto me by Sebastian Gabot, our countryman Venetian, a man of great experience, and very rare in the art of Navigation and the knowledge of Cosmography: who sailed along and beyond this land of New France, at the charges of King Henry the seventh, King of England. And he told me that having sailed a long time West and by North beyond these islands unto the latitude of sixty-seven degrees and a half under the North Pole, and at the 11 day of June, finding still the open sea without any manner of impediment, he thought verily by that way to have passed on still the way to Cathaio, which is in the East and would have