14 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



things and num y more Cartier could not help knowing. He had probablj' 

 been out on the coast before or he would not have been chosen as 

 captain. If then, any one, a member of this societ}' or not, should claim 

 Cape Breton as the landfall of John Cabot, let it not be thought to 

 derogate from the merit of Jacques Cartier but rather to establish it. 



SUMMAEY. 



As the commemoration of John Cabot's achievement is a subject now 

 present in the public mind and, inasmuch as the monograph to which 

 this paper is a sequel was published two j'ears ago and in the first or 

 quarto series of Transactions of this Society, it may not be amiss to 

 recapitulate shortly the various lines of reasoning which led the writer 

 to advocate the Cape Breton landfall. These lines are convergent and 

 are not dependent one upon another, so that the refutation of one will 

 not involve a rejection of the result. Each argument is good ^jro tanto 

 and when a number of indeiDcndent lines of thought lead to one result 

 the correctness of that result attains to a very high degree of probability. 



The question is the landfall of the first of two voyages admitted to 

 have been made in 1497 and 1498 ; and three localities have been put for- 

 ward as entitled to the distinction of being the place Avhere (putting aside 

 the Northmen) Europeans first landed on this continent. These are (1) 

 some point on the Labrador coast, and specially Cape Chidley ; (2) Bona- 

 vista. on the coast of Newfoundland ; and (3) Cape North, or Cape 

 Breton, on Cape Breton Jsland. 



It was shown that a separate study of the contemporary docujnents 

 revealed the fact that the first voyage was on a western course and to a 

 landfall in a pleasant and temperate climate ; and a separate study of the 

 later documents proved that they were concerned only with a voyage on 

 a northern and northwestern coui'se, by way of Iceland, to a region of ice 

 and continual daylight. The striking contrasts between the two voyages 

 were set forth in detail, and it was shown that Labrador cori-esponded 

 with the conditions of the second voyage alone. 



The landfall of the first voyage had been described on December 

 ISth, 1497, from the lips of John Cabot himself by a distinguished Italian 

 envoy in a letter to his master, the Duke of Milan, as follows : '• They say 

 " that there the land is excellent and the climate tem])erate, suggesting 

 " that brasil and silk grow there." This excluded Labrador (see Api)en- 

 dix A) from the question. Furthermore, ui)on these representations a 

 large expedition sailed in the following year, 1498, with a view to trade 

 and settlement, and reached a region of frost and ice. It was argued 

 that any one who had once seen the coast of Labrador would not have 

 taken an expedition of 300 men there to settle and trade on the coast. 



Labrador l)eing excluded, La Cosa's map (see Api»endix D) was 

 taken and its easternmost named point was shown to be our Cape Eace. 



