90, ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
pay fees, but what they salbe pleased to do out of their own discretion 
to the Herauldes or to any such officer of whom they shall have use.” 
The Baronets on their part likewise did much to advance the 
fortunes of the land from which they took their designation. Besides 
contributing some 480,000 merks towards the colonization and explora- 
tions of the country, the entries in the Minute Books of General Re- 
gister of Sasines at Edinburgh prove what large extents of territory in 
Nova Scotia were possessed by them, and though the cession to France 
of their capital, Port Royal, saw the end of their enterprise in the 
Royal Province itself, and although owing to the short period of their 
occupancy they and their followers could achieve but little, shall their 
names be forgotten and the memory of their efforts be allowed to fall 
into oblivion by their fellow-countrymen to-day? Far otherwise should 
it be! Let it be. remembered that these ancient Baronets of Nova 
Scotia were the first subjects of a British Monarch to take a firm hold 
of this vast territory, a newly acquired land, practically unknown, and 
unexplored, and to establish a permanent settlement therein, chequer- 
ed though its fortunes were and shortlived its existence; and thereby 
proved themselves not only vindicators of the wisdom of the colonial 
policy of their Sovereign, but also the first real founders of the British 
Empire in America—the glorious Dominion of the West,—and Pio- 
neers of Greater Britain. 
DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION. 
John Cabot, an adventurous Venetian, who had settled in Eng- 
land as a merchant, being fired with a spirit of maritime enterprise and 
discovery, obtained presentation at the Court of King Henry the 
Seventh. He produced a chart, and declaring that he would do for 
England what Columbus had done for Spain, obtained the favour of 
the King, who, by Letters Patent, dated 5th of March, 1496, granted 
to him and his sons the right to sail at their own charges under the 
Flag of England in search of new lands, and appointed them Governors 
of any they might discover. © 
Cabot, with his son, Sebastian, and a crew of eighteen men em- 
barked at Bristol on board a small ship named the Matthew, and af- 
ter sailing west for fifty days, discovered land at five o’clock in the 
morning of St. John’s day, the 24th of June, 1497. This land was the 
northern part of Cape Breton, which they named Prima Terra Vista. 
Here Cabot set up a great cross together with the Standard of Eng- 
land, and by its side the Venetian Ensign; and without making any 
stay in the country at once set sail for home, which he reached in less 
