[o'brien] CABOT'S LANDFALL AND CHART 4SS 



Great Homer nods occasionally, but he remains Great Homer still. So 

 it is with La Cosa. It is, however, to be borne in mind that his map 

 of 1500 was never reproduced, and was quickly lost sight of in Spain. 



The glory of having been the first to open up Hudson Straits and 

 Bay belongs to John Cabot. The witnesses quoted in the Address were 

 competent ones, they could not have had any sinister object in view in 

 writing as they did. They set down as a well known fact, not as a sur- 

 mise, or as a debatable question, that Cabot in his search for a northwest 

 passage to the east, penetrated the frozen regions as far as the sixty- 

 seventh degree and a half. The chart, read by thef scale given in the 

 Address, confirms their testimony. Indeed, it is quite probable that it 

 was a copy of this very chart which "hung in the Queen's Majesty's 

 Privie Galleriei at Whitehall," and which Sir Humphrey Gilbert saw, 

 and to which Francis Bacon refers. Thus both by internal and external 

 evidence we prove that our reading of Cabot's chart is correct, and the 

 course of the second voyage is made to depend, like that of the first, on 

 evidence, not conjecture. 



