Slide 1

The Age of
Exploration:
letters and voices

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


Slide 2

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


Slide 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


Slide 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 God’s 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


Slide 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


Slide 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


Slide 7

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 Cartier’s
voyage prepared for
the King of France