king. A conspiracy, headed by the son of the murdered Almagro, was formed against him. On a Sunday afternoon, in 1541, at the hour when the tyrant was accustomed to sleep, a band of the confederates burst into his palace, killed or dispersed his servants, and attacked him. Armed only with a sword and buckler, he defended himself with the most desperate courage. Four of his assailants he slew; five more he wounded; and still he fought on. At last, one of the band engaged him and drew his attention from the rest; and, while Pizarro dealt a furious blow at his chief assailant, the others succeeded in giving him a mortal wound. He fell at the feet of an image of Christ, which, it is said, he kissed at the moment of his death.

So perished, in his sixty-eighth year, the man who was, perhaps, the most resolute of all the sons of men. In mere strength of purpose, it is questionable if his equal ever lived; but, though this is one of the most valuable of qualities, and accomplishes very great things, a man must have much more in order to turn to good account the prizes won by it. Pizarro was little more than a magnificently gifted brute.

SEBASTIAN CABOT.

IN 1493, when the news of Columbus' great discovery was making its way over Europe, there was living at Bristol, in England, an old Italian merchant named Giovanni Cabota, which his English neighbors corrupted into John Cabot. This old gentleman had been so much a wanderer that the place of his birth is now unknown. He had lived fifteen years in Venice, then the first commercial port in Europe; and from Venice had removed to London, and from London to Bristol, where he was living, in 1493, in some opulence, and in high repute. It is not known whether, up to that time, he had ever been a mariner; nor, indeed, is it quite certain that he ever in his life made a voyage on the ocean.

John Cabot had three sons, one of whom was named Sebastian, born probably in Bristol, where he grew to man's estate, and exercised the craft of map-maker. All maps were then drawn by hand, as all books had formerly been written with the pen. Map-making was a considerable business in commercial ports, and one that was held in high esteem. Columbus was a map-maker at one period of his life, and it was while plying this vocation that the conviction grew in his mind that there must be some land in the western hemisphere to balance the great continent in the eastern. Sebastian Cabot, as a maker of maps, had a peculiar interest in the news that came from Spain in the summer of 1493. He had shared in the general impression that there was land in the western hemisphere, and he was now obliged to place the islands discovered by Columbus on his maps.

In September of this year Columbus sailed again for the New World with a fleet of seventeen vessels and fifteen hundred

men,all Europe, so to speak, looking on with amazement and admiration. He returned in June, 1496, with accounts of discoveries still more extensive and alluring. We can easily imagine what were the feelings of the avaricious Henry VII., King of England, when he reflected that all this glory and wealth might have been his but for an accident. Columbus had sent his brother, Bartholomew, to England, to solicit the patronage of Henry VII.; but on the voyage Bartholomew was taken by pirates and carried away into captivity.

In these circumstances, it was not difficult to interest the English king in a scheme of western discovery. Sebastian Cabot, young, and fired with ambition to follow the career of Columbus, was probably the prime mover of the enterprise; but the patent granted by the king conferred the requisite authority upon "John Kabotto" and his sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancius. The king took care not to risk any capital in the proposed voyage; for the patent authorized the adventurers "to sail to all parts, countries and seas of the East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and ensigns, with five ships, etc., upon their own proper costs and charges." The wealthy Bristol merchant, in all probability, furnished the capital of the enterprise which gave to England all her rights in North America; and that merchant was not an Englishman. John Cabot, unable or unwilling to fit out five ships, caused one to be made ready at Bristol. The name of this vessel— the first ever within sight of the continent of North America -was the Matthew; and she sailed from Bristol in May, 1497. The voyage made in this ship is always spoken of as the voyage of "John Cabot and his son Sebastian; " but some recent investigators have doubted whether the father really sailed in the ship. Their reasons are not convincing. The old man probably accompanied his son, leaving to the young man the toils and responsibility of command.

The Matthew, leaving Bristol in May, sailed westward twenty-one hundred miles; and on the 24th of June, 1497, at five in the morning, Sebastian Cabot descried the lofty and dismal shores of Labrador. This was fourteen months before Columbus saw the main land of America. The Cabots,

therefore, were the discoverers of North America; and the British claim to the possession of the thirteen colonies rested primarily upon this fact. Sebastian Cabot was more surprised than pleased with his discovery. Up to this time Columbus and all the world supposed that the newly-discovered countries were parts of the eastern continent, and the prime motive of the Cabots and Henry VII. was to discover a north-west passage to India. Young Cabot, therefore, when he saw those cliffs of Labrador blocking his way, was disappointed rather than gratified. Undaunted, however, he ran along the coast, as if expecting to find somewhere an opening, and continued to sail northward until the sun was visible almost all the twentyfour hours. He landed on the rock-bound coast, but found no inhabitant. Having taken formal possession of this unknown country (which they supposed to be an outlying portion of Tartary), the adventurers turned their prow toward England, which they reached in August, after an absence of about three months.

All England was filled with the renown of this marvellous adventure; and the king rewarded the Cabots with honors and money. It is related in the old chronicles that John Cabot was named the great admiral; that he dressed in silk; and that whenever he went abroad crowds of people followed him.

The aged merchant now vanishes from history. In May of the next year, Sebastian Cabot, with two ships and a large company, sailed again from Bristol in quest of a shorter passage to the rich countries of the Eastern World. He was then little more than twenty-one years of age, and his family defrayed the greater part of the expense of the voyage. Starting with the notion that the pathway to the East was to be found far to the North, he continued his northern course until he had gone far beyond the point reached on the previous voyage. Icebergs began to obstruct his passage; but he pushed on, ever hoping to discover an opening in the coast; until, at length, the whole ocean, as far as the eye could reach, was covered with masses of floating ice. Fortunately, there was no night in that region during the month of July, and he could see before him at all times. Despairing of reaching

India by a northern cut, he changed his course to the southward, and sailed along the coast until he reached a region inhabitable by animals and men. He landed at several points. He found deer larger than those he had seen in English parks. He discovered men clad in the skins of beasts, and using implements made of copper. Such dense shoals of codfish played about the bows of his vessels that he supposed they lessened their speed, and he gave the fish a name expressive of this idea, bacallaos. He saw bears spring into the water and catch codfish with their paws.

The fact of his seeing the Indians using copper is interesting. When I visited the copper mines of Lake Superior, a few years ago, I was shown many signs that those mines had been worked long ago, by some unknown race. Deep holes in the earth, in which trees two hundred years old are growing, may still be seen; and at the bottom of such holes there is always plenty of copper. To this day these cavities are the "prospector's" best guide. A large number of round stone mallets, used by the Indians in breaking off pieces of copper from the mass, have been found, and are shown in the hotels along the coast. It is remarkable that the Indians having once used copper should have ceased to use it. No Indians within the memory of man have worked the mines, or possessed any of

the metal.

Captain Cabot, always keeping in mind the main object of his voyage, skirted the coast as far as Florida, but, finding no break in the shore that promised a passage to the Eastern World, he turned his course toward England, and entered Bristol harbor late in the autumn, after an absence of six months.

He considered his voyage a failure. England so considered it. He had added a continent to the British empire, and no one valued the acquisition. So little did Cabot himself appreciate the importance of his discoveries, that, though he and his two brothers possessed the exclusive right to trade with North America, he never attempted to avail himself of that right, either by himself or through others. He was probably left in easy circumstances by his father, and the prospect of mere gain