The King's permission was for five ships, but the wise
Cabot had heard something of the hardships of the first expeditions to
Hispaniola, and preferred to keep within his means, and sail with men
whom he could trust.
But on this voyage they found locked harbors not closed by the order of
any King but by natural causes,--harbors without inhabitants or means of
supporting life, and so far north as to be blocked by ice for half the
year. They sailed seven hundred leagues west and came at last to a rocky
wooded coast. Now in all the books of travel in Asia, mention had been
made of an immense territory ruled by the Grand Cham of Tartary, whose
hordes had nearly overrun Eastern Europe in times not so very long ago.
The adventures of Marco Polo the Venetian, in a great book sent to Cabot
by his wife's father, had been the fairy-tale of Sebastian and his
brothers from the time they were old enough to understand a story. In
this book it was written how Marco Polo and his companions passed
through utterly uninhabited wilds in the Great Khan's empire, and
afterward came to a region of barbarians, who robbed and killed
travelers. These fierce people lived on the fruits and game of the
forest, cultivating no fields; they dressed in the skins of wild animals
and used salt for money.
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