The Age of Exploration: letters and voices

1
The Age of Explorationletters and voices

• Pictures courtesy the Library of Congress
• Letter excerpts and eyewitness accounts courtesy
  Wisconsin Historical Societys American Journeys

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John Cabot

• Sayled in this tracte so farre towarde the
  weste, that the Ilande of Cuba bee on my lefte
  hande, in manere in the same degree of
  longitude.
• - John Cabot, in a letter to King Henry VII

3
Vasco Nunez de Balboa

• One thing I supplicate your majesty that you
  will give orders, under a great penalty, that no
  bachelors of law should be allowed to come here
  the New World for not only are they bad
  themselves, but they also make and contrive a
  thousand inequities.
• - Vasco Nuñez de Balboa to Ferdinand V of Spain,
  1513

4
Juan Ponce de Leon

• I discovered, at my own cost and charge, the
  Island Florida and now I return to that island,
  if it please Gods will, to settle it, being
  enabled to carry a number o f people that the
  name of Christ may be praised there and Your
  Majesty served with the fruit that land produces.
• - Juan Ponce de Leon, in a letter to Charles V,
  1521

5
Christopher Columbus

• There should go there settlers up to the number
  of two thousand who may want to go so as to
  render the possession of the country safer and
  cause it to be more profitable
• - Christopher Columbus, in a letter to King
  Ferdinand and Queen Isabella,1493

6
Henry Hudson
The discoverie of the North-west Passage, begunne
the seventeenth of Aprill, 1610, ended with his
end, being treacherously exposed by some of the
Companie. - Robert Juet, 1609
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Jacques Cartier

• So we sayled with a good and prosperous wind,
  until the 20 of the said moneth, at which time
  the weather turned into stormes and tempests, the
  which with contrary winds, and darkenesse,
  endured so long that our ships being without any
  rest, suffered as much as any ships that ever
  went on seas

- A report on Cartiers voyage prepared for the
King of France