THE ROUND TOWER AT NEWPORT.

25

shown that the Tower was rather built by a man of peace than by "A Viking old," being modelled after the windmill of Chesterton, England, of which he gives a cut.*

An unshapely block of stone dug up on the banks of the Merrimac has given Mr. Whittier ground for his charming verses "The Norsemen," and we may thank him that his poetic mind is so fashioned that it,

Neither can we get satisfaction from the so-called "writing" on

Dighton on the Taunton River,

which can hardly be tortured into anything of historic value, nor traced to a time anterior to 1680.

CHAPTER II.

THE CABOTS AND OTHER DISCOVERERS.

The black northeaster,

Through the snowstorm hurled,
Drives our English hearts of oak
Seaward round the world.

T this period there was

AT

a centre of interest in maritime discovery in the west of England, as well as in Spain and Portugal, and it was from the city of Bristol that the navigator went out who achieved the first discovery of our continent.

The history of the American people is but a continuation of the history of the people of England, and it was fitting that the voyager who discovered our land should have sailed from the shores of the Mother Country. The offer which Columbus had authorized his brother to make to King Henry VII., was proffered at about the time that the Red Rose and the White had been united (in the persons of that monarch and Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward IV.) at the close of the disastrous War of the Roses.*

Bartholomew Columbus started for England in 1484 and returned to his famous brother ten years later. The War of the Roses closed in 1485.

The peace that ensued had given a new impetus to commerce as well as to enterprise, and it is said, in a letter of Don Pedro de Azala, written in 1498, that for seven years the people had been sending out vessels from Bristol to find the islands of Brazil and the island of the Seven Cities. In 1495 a patent was granted to John Cabot (or Kabotte) and his sons Lewis, Sebastian and Sanctus, authorizing them to go in search of islands, provinces or regions hitherto unseen by Christians, and to take possession of them for the English crown, the exclusive right of trade being awarded to them on condition that one fifth of their gains should be paid to the King. Under this authority John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian, sailed from Bristol in May, 1497, and at the distance of "some seven hundred leagues," according to his computation, arrived, as he supposed, at the shores of the kingdom of the Grand Cham. He must have suffered a revulsion of feelings as he saw the land, for he had actually come upon the dreary shores of Cape Breton Island, or possibly of Labrador, which he called "Prima Vista." * It was the twenty-fourth of June. Cabot set up a large cross, planted the banner of England with that of Venice, and took possession of the country in the name of King Henry VII. After coasting along the shores for three hundred leagues, and seeing no inhabitants, he returned to England, arriving at Bristol in August.

* Mr. Richard Biddle, in his "Memoir of Sebastian Cabot," contends that "Prima Vista" was Labrador, but on the "Mappe-Monde" of Cabot, made in 1544, the name is given to the end of Cape Breton Island. See proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, for April, 1867, remarks of Charles Deane, LL. D.