New Light on the 1497 Cabot Voyage to America
W HILE WE were both doing research in the Archivo de Simaneas last spring, Dr. Hayward Keniston, knowing that I was interested in the discovery of North America, mentioned that he had seen a document relating to English voyages in one of the first three legajos of Estado de Castilla. My first search through the three legajos yielded nothing, but a second attempt three weeks later established the fact that the document in question was folio 6, legajo 2. I immediately realized its importance. It is a letter from an English merchant named John Day to the Grand Admiral of Castile, Don Fadrique Enriquez, in answer to a request for further information concerning English voyages. Although it bears no date and does not mention John Cabot by name, there is no doubt that it refers to Cabot's 1497 voyage. Prior to the finding of this letter, documentary evidence relating to the 1497 voyage consisted of the four following letters: Lorenzo Pasqualigo to his brothers in Venice (August 23, 1497), Raimondo di Sancino to the Duke of Milan (August 24, and December 18, 1497), and Pedro de Ayala to the Catholic King (July 25, 1498).1 John Day's letter constitutes the fifth and most detailed report of the 1497 Cabot expedition. Day states that the expedition consisted of one ship carrying twenty men. According to him, they left England at the end of May and took thirty-five days to reach the "tierra de primera vista." On the map made by Sebastian Cabot in 1544, an engraved copy of which is kept in Paris, the "tierra de primera vista" is indicated as having been sighted on June 24.2 Therefore the expedition must have left England on May 20 or 21. * The author is an American scholar who has been carrying on research in European archives on early voyages to America. ' These documents have been published by Henry Harrisse, Jean et Sebastian Cabot (Paris, 1882), and by Francesco Tarducci, Di Giovanni e Sebastiano Caboto (Venice, 1892). 2 Harrisse, The Discovery of North America (New York and Paris, 1892), p. 12.