to find that they had
gained a day in their reckoning--a proof of the scanty knowledge at that
time possessed, respecting one of the plainest and most obvious results of
the diurnal motion of the earth.

The voyage of Magellan occupied 1124 days: Sir Francis Drake, who sailed
round the world about half a century afterwards, accomplished the passage
in 1051 days: the next circumnavigator sailed round the globe in 769 days;
and the first navigators who passed to the south of Terra del Fuego,
accomplished the voyage in 749 days. In the middle of the eighteenth
century, a Scotch privateer sailed round the world in 240 days.

In the meantime, several voyages had been performed to the east coast of
North America. The first voyages to this part of the new world were
undertaken by the English: there is some doubt and uncertainty respecting
the period when these were performed. The following seems the most probable
account.

At the time when Columbus discovered America, there lived in London a
Venetian merchant, John Cabot, who had three sons. The father was a man of
science, and had paid particular attention to the doctrine of the spheres:
his studies, as well as his business as a merchant, induced him to feel
much interest in the discoveries which were at that period making. He seems
to have applied to Henry VII.; who accordingly empowered him to sail from
England under the royal flag, to make discoveries in the east, the west,
and the north, and to take possession of countries inhabited by Pagans, and
not previously discovered by other European nations. The king gave him two
ships, and the merchants of Bristol three or four small vessels, loaded
with coarse cloth, caps, and other small goods. The doubt respecting the
precise date of this voyage seems to receive the most satisfactory solution
from the following contemporary testimony of Alderman Fabian, who says, in
his _Chronicle of England and France_, that Cabot sailed in the
beginning of May, in the mayoralty of John Tate, that is, in 1497, and
returned in the subsequent mayoralty of William Purchase, bringing with him
three _sauvages_ from Newfoundland. This fixes the date of this
voyage: the course he steered, and the limits of his voyage, are however
liable to uncertainty. He himself informs us, that he reached only 56 deg.
north latitude, and that the coast of America, at that part, winded to the
east: but there is no coast of North America that answers to this
desc