26 



ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



taken for the Department of Marine of Canada, which has the care and 

 maintenance of the lighthouse npon this historic landmark of the high- 

 Avay between the old and the new worlds 



Cape Race, from the Ocean. 



APPENDIX E. 



Jacques Cartier and his Discoveries. 



Some apology is required for alluding to facts so elementary as 

 these, inasmuch as they are obvious to all students, and they have been 

 elucidated in minute detail by a band of French Canadian scholars whose 

 contributions to the history of this continent have won respectful 

 attention in the old Avorld as Avell as in the new. No such question as 

 '"Cartier vs. Cabot" was raised in the Royal Society of Canada, the 

 first section of which includes many French writers whose reseai'ches 

 have thrown light on the obscurer portions of our history and who 

 are adepts in such inquiries as these. It became advisable to notice 

 the cry of " Cartier vs. Cabot " put forth by some correspondents 

 of new.spapers, not for the sake of the society, but for the sake of the 

 general public. Cape Breton is a part of the province of Nova Scotia 

 which did not. until 1867, become part of the Dominion of Canada. It 

 was never Canada before that date, and it is therefore misleading to call 

 Cabot the discoverer of Canada as it would be misleading to speak of 

 Ponce de Leon as the discoverer of the United States. 



The persons who felt called upon to rush to the defence of .Tacques 

 Cartier, about whom nobody was thinking, did not stop to consider the 

 logical result of their inconsiderate zeal. For if it be true, as Humboldt 

 and his followers jnaintain, that Cabot struck the coast of Labrador and 

 followed it down in the way they think indicated by La Cosa's map — if it 



