[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 155 
THE PERIOD OF DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION. 
Down to 1606. 
The first explorers of our eastern coast were without doubt the 
Northmen. In the course of their journeys they gave the names Helle- 
land, Markland and some others to different sections of the coast, thus 
implying certain shadowy boundaries. But the identity and limits of 
these places are uncertain, while their memory has well nigh vanished 
utterly, and no trace of them remained to influence the political geog- 
raphy of later times. 
It was in 1492 that Columbus discovered America and initiated 
the authentic history of the new world. Strangely enough it was but 
a year or two later that the first artificial boundary line of the new 
world was established. This was the line of separation of the “spheres 
of influence” of the Kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, the history of 
which has been traced with the most satisfactory fulness and clearness 
by Dr. S. E. Dawson, in the fifth volume of the second series of these 
Transactions. As Dr. Dawson there shows, this line was not the line of 
Pope Alexander VI. (established by a Bull of 1493), as commonly 
stated, but the line agreed upon by Spain and Portugal by the Treaty 
of Tordesillas in 1494. Pope Alexander’s line, it is of interest to note, 
was drawn north and south 100 leagues west of the Azores, this being 
the natural line supposed by Columbus to be that of no variation of the 
compass. The treaty line of the next year was 370 leagues west of the 
Cape Verde Islands, and was not a natural but a compromise line. 
Now, as Dr. Dawson has shown, this line really lies in the Atlantic 
Ocean a long distance to the eastward of Newfoundland, but by the two 
nations concerned it was supposed to cut the continent believed by them 
to be Asia, an error justified by the imperfect geographical knowledge 
of the times. Dr. Dawson reproduces four maps on which this line is 
drawn, two Spanish, and two Portuguese maps of early date (Cantino, 
1502, one of 1514-1520, Ribero, 1527, and Nuno Garcia, 1527), and in 
all of them the line occupies about the present position of meridian 60°, 
thus running between Cape Breton and Newfoundland. All west of the 
line, including the present New Brunswick, thus fell within the sphere 
allotted to Spain, while Portugal had but the part to the east. In 
this clearly marked line we have the first political boundary of the new 
world, but it was disregarded by those who established it as well as by 
the rest of the world, and it soon vanished, leaving no inheritance. 
