lO ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



conclusive!}' disproved his main thesis; for the codtish do not arrive at 

 Cape Chidley. until August 15th. five days after John Cabot is known 

 to have been in London. In fact, the codtish do not approach any part 

 of Northern Labrador before July 20th. In Appendix Gr is given a table 

 of the movement of the fish along the coast, extracted from Prof. Hind's 

 evidence before the Fisher}^ Commission of the Treaty of Washington. 

 This disposes of the whole of Labrador as a probable landfall. 



Such errors as these are palpable to most Canadians, but they mis- 

 lead other people ; and even some of our own people, reading in the cur- 

 sory manner now in vogue, do not notice them, but accept Mr. Harrisse's 

 conclusions without stopping to examine the foundations on which they are 

 built. In pointing them out, I have incidentally indicated the reasons 

 which compel me to reject Labrador as the landfall of 1497. As to 

 Newfoundland and Bonavista, Mr. Harrisse does not even mention, still 

 less discuss them, so far, in his opinion, are they out of the question ; and 

 the same may be said of all the students, excepting Judge Prowse and 

 Bishop Ilowley, wdio since Biddle have been examining the subject in any 

 detailed way. 



I shall not again go over the ground of the monograph of 1894. 

 Since that was written 1 have not found anything to shake the conclusions 

 then adopted, and the positive arguments in favovir of Cape Breton ai-e 

 therein fully set forth. Those conclusions were not to any considerable 

 extent novel. Very little which is new could, at this late period of the 

 discussion, be added, seeing that the subject has been the battletield of 

 fifty years of controvei-sy. The voluminous references " indicated the 

 materials uj^on which the conclusions were founded. In the " Trans- 

 actions" of this society Professor Ganong'- had shown that the large 

 island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence drawn on the old majjs could not have 

 been Prince Edward Island, and Mr. Joseph Pope, in his Jacques Cartier 

 (published 1890), had followed him. Dr. Patterson had published, in the 

 same '-Transactions" (1890), a valuable monograph upon the Portuguese 

 discoveries on the northeast coast of America, and Dr. Bourinot^' in 1892 

 had treated of the Cabot voyages in his monograph on Cape Breton. 

 The European, as well as the American authorities who argued for a 

 landfall on the island of Cape Breton placed it at Cape North, excepting 

 only Mr. Ilarri.sse, who, in his fii-st book, Jean et Sébastien Cabot, decided 

 for Cape Percy; and, if Mr. Harrisse had adhered to that opinion, there 

 would have been little practical ditterence between his conclusions and those 

 of the writer, but in his later books he transferred the landfall to Labrador, 

 and, lastly, to the absolutely impossible Cape Chidley. All the writers 

 Avho have hitherto advocated the claims of Cape Breton have done so 

 under the influence of the map of 1544 ; and those who have argued for 

 Labrador appear to rae to have been unduly influenced by statements 

 concerning the voyages of 1498 found in Peter Martyr, Ramusio, Gomara 

 and others who wrote long subsequently to the date of the discovery. 



