[s. E. DAWSON] THE LINES OF DEMARCATION 525 



cotild they possibly be correct when the old navigators had no means 

 of correcting their dead reckoning ? Hence it was that, in measur- 

 ing their course south and east to the Moluccas round the Cape of Good 

 Hope and oirer the Indian Ocean, their estimations of longitude differed 

 by as much as forty-six degrees. If, as has been stated above, the 

 Mediterranean Sea, which washed their feet from childhood, was always 

 laid down twenty degrees too long, ought it to be cause for wonder if, 

 across the unquiet western ocean, their longitude was fifteen degrees 

 in error ? 



Elsewhere, I have endeavoured to point out the injustice to the 

 memory of Sebastian Cabot in calling him false and venal for changing 

 his service, as did so many of the great sailors of those days without 

 blame. The concurrence of the line of partition on these maps clears 

 the memory of that most daring of sailors, Corte Reale, from the charge 

 of "wantonly" inscribing Newfoundland on his maps "as within the 

 "dominions of Portugal." He did not make the Cantino map, and, 

 if that map was based on his information, the information is confirmed 

 by the Spanish maps twenty-five years later. Nor can it be said that 

 the Spanish cartographers were misled by him ; for their maps were 

 based on the reports of Estevan Gomez, who spent ten months along 

 the east coast of America in A.D. 1525. 



There are also very weighty historical reasons which confirm the 

 above conclusion as to the point of contact between the two spheres of 

 influence. When John Cabot was preparing to sail to the west. King 

 Eerdinand, in a letter to De Puebla (March 28, 1496), objected to the 

 expedition as being in prejudice to "our rights or those of the King of 

 " Portugal." Aftenvards, in A.D. 1511, the King's orders to Juan de 

 Agramonte, relative to Cabot, manifest a doubt as to which side of the 

 line the discovery was on. He was ordered to take Breton pilots ; 

 thus clearly indicating the locality to be in the "Bay of the Bretons," 

 in the region marked on the Portuguese chart Fig. 6, as " the land dis- 

 covered by the Bretons;" and he is to make a settlement there, with- 

 out infringing on the rights of Portugal This last condition confirms 

 the maps that the point of contact was in the King's opinion near the 

 spot of Cabot's discovery as laid down subsequently in Sebastian Cabot's 

 map of 1544. 



Again, in A.D. 1541, when Spanish spies reported the preparations 

 for Roberval's proposed settlement, the Spanish ambassador at Lisbon 

 endeavoured to incite the King of Portugal to send an expedition to 

 destroy these Erench interlopers. The King replied that he knew 

 where the Erench were going and that it was in his territory ; but he 

 declined to take action because they could do him no harm there, and 



