470 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Ululer liis mortal oiu'iiiy, Louis XI. of France; but Cabot, au Italian, 

 bom in Venice, is judged as if he had been a captain in the French 

 navy who had sought employment from the Em}3eror of Germany. 

 This is a uiislmdiug anachrouism, for the present exaggerated antag- 

 onism of nationalities is of comparatively recent growth and received 

 its chief impetus in the religious wars which followed in the sixteenth 

 century. 



The same tendency to anachronism has affected the interpretation 

 of the old charts. If the early sailors had possessed sufficient kuow- 

 ledge they would have made more accurate piaps ; but they had neither 

 the information nor the instruments necessary, therefore the secret of 

 longitude was hidden from them. All their longitudinal distances 

 were «ilcidated l)y dead reckoning ; and the log line, even, was not in 

 use imtil 1521, but their maps are now ofcen measured in millimetres 

 as if they were the products of an admiralty survey. Elaborate argu- 

 ments have been founded upon the trend of their coast lines, without 

 considering that their maps were drawn to compass bearings, and ours 

 are always drawn to the true meridian. The conditions of the age in 

 which they lived made it possible for the sailors of all the western 

 nations to calculate their distances by a uniform customary league ; 

 but that league was not the admiralty league of three minutes of the 

 Equator nor the English land league of three statute miles. 



The present paper then, although it may have been suggested 

 by the Venezuelan controversy, will not discuss the boundary of British 

 Guiana. Its object is to throw light upon our own history by a detailed 

 examination of the Bulls of Pope Alexiander VI. and the pretensions 

 based upon them. The distances sijecified in the Bull and in the treaty 

 lead to a discussion of the nautical measures of length in use at that 

 time and the Portuguese names still clinging to our coasts bear witness 

 to the belief that the line of demarcation cut the northeastern coast of 

 America, somewhere in the present province of 'Nova Scotia. All these 

 subjects are of interest, since they bear upon the true interpretation of 

 the early maps and the elucidation of the historical geography of our 

 Atlantic coast. 



il. — International Law in 1493, 



It has been stated by writers of great weight that Grotius laid the 

 foundation of international law as it is now understood. This mciuis 

 that, in the application of the principles of international law, references 

 seldom go further Ijack than to the exhaustive work of Grotiu.s, pub- 

 lished at Paris in 1625. It does not mean that international law did 



