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Rh his passage to England, Bartholomew was captured by pirates, plundered of everything, and made a slave. After some time he made his escape, and reached this country, but in such a state of destitution that he was obliged to apply himself to drawing sea-charts for a livelihood, and for the means of procuring himself decent clothes, before he could appear in the royal presence. King Henry so far listened to his proposals as to desire him to bring his brother to England; and he was on his way to Spain for that purpose, when, on reaching Paris, he learned that Columbus had already set out on his voyage under the patronage of the Spanish court. The capture of Bartholomew by pirates, it is remarked by the historian of our commerce, "thus turned out, under the direction of Providence, the means of preserving the English from losing their industry and commercial spirit in the mines of Mexico and Peru." Columbus sailed on his memorable voyage, from the bar of Saltes, near Palos, in Andalusia, on Friday, the 3rd of August, 1492, and reached the island of San Salvador on the 12th of October. He afterwards discovered Cuba, Hispaniola, and others of the West Indian islands: and on the 15th of March, 1493, he again landed at Palos, bringing back to the astonished nations of Europe the tidings of his success, in having reached what he continued to believe to his dying day to be the eastern shore of the Indies—for it as not till twenty years after this time, and seven years after the original discoverer of the new world had been laid in his grave, that the Pacific was first seen from the mountains near Panama by Balboa. On the 25th of September, 1493, Columbus sailed from Cadiz on his second voyage, from which he returned to the same port on the 11th of June, 1496, after having discovered the Caribbee Islands, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica.

Meanwhile, the spirit of enterprise in the new direction thus pointed out had spread among the navigators and governments of other countries; and on the 5th of March, in this last-mentioned year, the King of England granted a patent to John Cabot, or Gabotto, a Venetian, then settled at Bristol, and to his three sons, Lewis,