4 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



The monograph, however, attracted very little attention at the time 

 it was read in May, 189-4 ; and the subject appeared to excite little inter- 

 est in the public mind. All the discussion of tifty years, so profoundly 

 interesting to Humboldt, Biddle, Kohl, Harrisse, Justin Win'sor, Kretsch- 

 mer. Kunstmann, D'Avezac, Deane, Henry Stevens, Fiske, Brevoort, and 

 many others, had taken place, for the most part, outside of Canada. The 

 Abbé Beaudoin, in Le Canada Français for October, 1888, did indeed con- 

 tribute a valuable paper upon the question, and it was incidentally treated 

 by Laverdière'^ and Ferland,' but they did not devote any special atten- 

 tion to it. Our honorary secretary, in his exhaustive monograph on 

 Cape Breton, published in 1892, paused to consider it in some of its 

 aspects, but, while apparently inclining to the Cape Breton landfall, he 

 did not diverge from his main theme to follow the details of what was 

 then to him a side issue. Another of our members, Mr. Suite, in his 

 Histoire des Canadiens Français, mentions the Cabots, without vStoppingto 

 discuss their achievements ; but the scholars who have taken up the 

 Cabot voyages for their main theme and have elaborated special studies 

 upon them, were almost all not resident in Canada. In January, 1895, 

 Mr. O. A. Howland contributed to the Canadian Magazine an article 

 upon this question, and took the year 1497 as his starting-point for Cana- 

 dian history. He has taken up the subject of a commemoration with 

 great vigour and earnestness, and is the leader of a movement for a his- 

 torical exposition in Toronto in the year 1897, planned on a broad, national 

 scale. 



The monograph of 1894 had two principal objects. Its main motive 

 was to establish the landfall of 1497 ; but another motive, scarcely less 

 in the writer's mind, was to dispel, before it was too late, the fog that was 

 gathering around our early geographical history in the shape of a theory 

 that Cabot had entered the gulf and discovered Prince Edward Island 

 and had named it the Island of St. John. This utterly baseless notion 

 was cree^îing into all the books, as one writer would repeat from another, 

 and it had got at last into thi- railway guide-books and began to crop out ' 

 in advertising pamphlets. AVhatever may be said about the landfall, this 

 last theory may be considered as effectually disposed of. 



The landfall advocated in the monograph has not passed without 

 challenge and the present paper is intended to consider such objections as 

 have come under the writer's notice since its publication. Not such 

 objections as are continually appearing in the shape of letters to newspapers 

 written by persons who would seem to have recently heard of the 

 matter for the first time ; but objections made by scholars and students 

 who recognize the difficulties surrounding the inquiry ; who know and 

 can weigh the original authorities, who take a real interest in the subject, 

 and who are prepared to give to it the time and the attention necessary 

 in all matters of historical research. 



