One account of Verazzani states that he landed at some place not named with some of his crew and was seized by the savages and killed and devoured in the presence of his companions on board, who sought in vain to give assistance. Such was the fate of the navigator who gave us the first notice of the harbor of New York and adjacent territory.

In that noted ancient work, "Hakluyt's Voyages," (vol. 3, p. 7,) is a statement from Cabot as follows: "When my father left Venice to dwell in England to follow the trade of merchandise, he took me with him to the Citie of London, while I was very young, yet having nevertheless some knowledge of letters and humanitie and of the Sphere. And when my father died in that time when news were brought of Don Christopher Columbus, Genoese, had discovered the coasts of India, whereof was great talk in all the court of Henry VII, who then reigned, insomuch that all men with great admiration affirmed it to be a thing more divine than human to sail by the West into the East, where spires grow, by a map that never was known before, by this same and report, there increased in my heart a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing."

The following extract is from page 6, vol. 3, of same work:

"In the yere of Our Lord, 1497, John Cabot and his sonne Sebastian (with an English fleet set out from Bristol), discovered that land which no man before this time had attempted, on the twenty-fourth of June, about five of the clock early in the morning. This land he called Prima Vista, that is to say First Seen, because I suppose it was that part whereof they had the first sight from the sea. That island which lieth out before the land, he called the Island of St. John, upon which occasion, as I think, because it was discovered upon the day of St. John the Baptist."

The probability is that Cabot sailed northwest a few weeks until his progress was arrested by floating icebergs, when he shaped his course to the south west and soon came in sight of the shore, named by him Prima Vista, and generally believed to be some part of Labrador or New Foundland. Thence he steered northward again to the sixty-seventh degree of latitude, where he was obliged to turn back by the discontent of his crew. He sailed along the coast in search of an outlet, as far as the neighborhood of the Gulf of Mexico, when a mutiny broke out in the ship's company, in consequence of which the further prosecution of the voyage was abandoned. Some accounts state that Cabot reached England with several savages and a valuable cargo while other writers assert that he never landed. It is certain he did not attempt any conquest or settlement in the countries he discovered. And this is the substance of Cabot's discoveries, on which England based her claim.