Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/88

 *

Suspending even the ordinary operations of commerce, it necessarily checked any further expeditions of discovery, so that Cabot would probably have remained for a time without employment, had he not been induced by the more promising aspect of affairs in Spain to return to that country. In 1518 he was appointed Pilot-Master to the Spanish monarchy, returning to Spain with Charles V. from England in 1520.

Though the functions of this office were of so much importance that no pilot was allowed to proceed to the Indies without previous examination and approval by him, they supply few incidents for record in his life. But a misunderstanding between Spain and Portugal soon brought him conspicuously forward in connection with the discoveries then being made by adventurous Spaniards, who were directing their attention to the Moluccas, through the passage which Magellan had been fortunate enough to find near the extreme southern point of the American continent. Portugal maintained that these discoveries fell within the limits assigned to her under the Papal Bull, and remonstrated in the strongest terms against any attempt on the part of Spain to carry on commerce in that quarter of the world. A conference was consequently held to consider the claims of Portugal, to which the men most famed for their nautical knowledge and experience were invited. At the

attributes it to the dirty habits of the English people at that period, and to the utter want of ventilation in their houses. Nicholls's Life of Cabot, p. 33.]
 * [Footnote: of Bristol to have been very severe in 1486. Erasmus directly