[O'BRIEN] CABOT'S LANDFALL AND CHART 437 



her schools of navigation the most renowned. As Ave have seen, her 

 commercial relations with Tanais were extensive and continuous. A 

 thorough knowledge, of this port and its approaches would be one of 

 the first requisites for a captain seeking lucrative employment. Of 

 this there can no longer he any doubt. Why this uninterrupted issuing 

 of maps and charts, this correcting of tables of calculation, and this 

 perfecting of nautical instruments, if they were not being applied to 

 practical uses ? 



We are not sure John Cabot visited Tanais, few, however, will now 

 look upon it as anything little less than certain. Even if he did not 

 make the voyage to Tanais, he knew its latitude as well as he knew 

 that of Bristol, for he was learned in all the knowledge of the' Venetians. 

 When he discovered Cape Breton Ire may, indeed, have thought he had 

 struck the eastern seaboard of Asia, but he was perfectly well aware 

 that it was no part of Tanais. Even the most unlettered of his sailors 

 knev.' that east of Tanais there stretched away the vast plains of Tar- 

 tary, and beyond them "far Cathay." What he did, for a time, think, 

 was tliat he had touched the shores of Asia lower down on its eastern 

 side than Tanais was on its western border. Hence he concluded its 

 climate should be more genial, and its resources more abundant. Da 

 Soncino, like all learned Ita,lians of his day, knew the position and com- 

 mercial importance of Tanais. It was therefore most natural that 

 Cabot, when giving him an account of his discovery, should make a 

 comparison between their respective latitudes. That he made the 

 comparison the clear words of Da Soncino's letter show. What pre- 

 vented m'any from realizing this was the idea that Tanais was an inde- 

 finite region somewhere in the East. As we have produced the testi- 

 mony of an ambassador of the Eepublic of Venice to the State of 

 Tanais (Amhasitore alia Tana) who dwelt in those parts for sixteen, 

 years, from 1436, which shows the city to' have been a great and well 

 known emporium with some territory, at least {la terra and again il 

 campo della Tana), all in Europe, that idea, together with the objection 

 founded on it, is no longer tenable. Hence the Presidential Address 

 proves from the writings of unimpeachable contemporary authorities, 

 that Cabot's landfall was on' Cape Breton Island. 



xVll the authorities cited by Dr. Dawson to prove the lack of geo- 

 graphical knowledge in the Middle Ages have sounded the shoals, but 

 not the depths of the mediœval mind. This is the easier process of the 

 two. A short line and a light plummet will find the sandbanks, but 

 depths are only sounded by measures of equal depth. Hence we need 

 not be surprised that their idea of the dip of the media?val mind, which 



