[s. B. DAwsox] THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 7 



the original Italian into Portuguese, but he does not show that there 

 ever was an original Italian. He assumes that there must have been 

 one, which is the very thing to be proved. He says Viegas gives the 

 name as Boavista, but he has not noticed that in Portuguese, after the 

 vowel, the n is sounded, though not written, as on that very map, do 

 Breto for Breton, and, on Eeinel's map, Joha for Johan and Boaventura 

 for Bonaventura. The tilde over the vowel may be omitted, but the n is 

 sounded all the same. 



I venture to think, therefore, that Judge Prowse has not proved his 

 thesis. Beyond doubt there was, in the vincritical time before Biddle 

 wrote in 1833, a general assumption that Newfoundland was the landfall, 

 and the effects of this are still felt in general literature ; and on looking 

 at a map one is led to think that Cabot would have steered for Xew- 

 foundland, without remembering that the whole ocean was to him a 

 perfect blank, a veil behind which lay he knew not what. 



And here again, in this most natural supposition, is another of Lord 

 Bacon's "idols of the tribe.' The thing which looks so plausible on our 

 modern maps, with all our modern knowledge, is not likely to have 

 happened to a ship feeling her way over an unknown and unquiet ocean. 

 As Pasqualigo describes the voyage from Cabot's own lips, "he Meandered 

 about for a long time, and at length hit upon land " ; but we sit down to 

 an atlas and trace the shortest course, as if Cabot, knowing where he was 

 going, made a course, as the crow flies, straight to an objective point. 

 Such evidence from presumptions and probabilities cannot weigh against 

 the positive evidence adduced for Cape Breton. 



During the last few months Mr. Henry Harrisse' has published a new 

 work on the Cabots, and although, in his first book, Jean et Sébastien 

 Cabot, he advocated Cape Breton, he adheres to his second theory of the 

 landfall and places it in Labrador at or near Cape Chidley. I cannot 

 sufficiently express my obligations to Mr. Harrisse, for he has made these 

 studies possible to me by his industry and research, and by re]iublishing 

 so many original documents. I have had all the advantages of Mr. Har- 

 risse's learning and labour ; but the adventitious circumstance of having 

 been born among the localities under discussion, and therefore familiar 

 with them from boj^hood, compels me to see that Mr. Harrisse's judgment 

 upon his materials is misled by the absence of a personal knowledge of 

 the northeast coast of America. The monograph of 189-t pointed out 

 some of the misconceptions which led him astray. This last book affords 

 other instances. Mr. Ganong's paper in the '-Transactions" of this 

 society for 1889, set him right, as he frankly admits, about Prince Edward 

 Island, but in going to Cape Chidley he has fallen into a new set of 

 errors, and in discussing these the Labrador theory must be incidentally 

 discussed. (See Appendix A, Labrador.) 



Mr. Harrisse, in attempting to disprove his earlier theory of the Cape 



