430 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



tained, but tliey did grow, and grow yet, on tlie gulf shore. Again, it 

 is contrary to what is well known regarding the habits of the Indians 

 to maint-ain that they dwelt on the ocean seaboard. They never did. 



It is unnecessary to say more on this point. If the patient student 

 will read the Address in conjunction with this paper, and carefully 

 follow the explanation of the maps to which wo refer, he will, I think, 

 come to the conclusion that the Cabot landfall was within the Gulf, 

 and that P. E. Island is the large island seen on the 'Sith June, 1497, 

 and named St. John. 



The third objection to be met has reference to Cosa's map, on 

 which Cabot's discoveries first appear, A cïireless expression of mine 

 is made, in Dr. Dawson's paper, the occasion of a passing criticism 

 which is not altogether imstrained. The Address said the northern 

 coast line alone was Cabot's, "the map is the offspring of Cosa's imagina- 

 tion." Perhaps I should have said, the map, or coloured portion sup- 

 posedly representing the shore in the northern part of North America. 

 It seemed, however, that the reader would understand reference was 

 not made to the map in general, but only to that particular part. Of 

 that enough. 



The Address stated that Cosa had procured a copy of Cabot's chart, 

 and joined it to his map making it run east and west, instead of north 

 and south. Proofs which, so far as I have seen, no one has attempted 

 to confute, based on reason and facts inlierent in the chart were ad- 

 vanced. If the theory was novel, the arguments were not far-fetched. 

 Dr. Dawson thinks no scale of the chart could be found, as, he stoutly 

 maintains, no scale was employed. To defend his views of the map he 

 is compelled to class the drawings of John Cabot with those, not of a 

 school boy, but of a toddler in the nursery. We hold Cabot had some 

 sense of proportion, else he never would have been a navigator. It is 

 objected, too, that the basis on which the argument for the scale rests 

 is arbitrary. Some might be entitled to make that objection, but not 

 Dr. Dawson. In his paper published in the Transactions- for 1894, he 

 locates the southernmost English flag, and Cavo Descubierto in practi- 

 cally the same latitude as I do. But apart from that, in calculations of 

 this nature one is justified in assuming a scale as a working hypothesis, 

 and which the conclusions afterwards prove to be no longer an hy- 

 pothesis, but a fact. Now since by that scale, and by orientating the 

 chart, «s is minutely demonstrated in the Address, all difficulties in 

 reading it disappear, the whole and its various parts are made intel- 

 ligible, and islands are found in th:ir proper position, we are justified 

 in claiming that we have passed from tlie stage of hypothesis to that of 



