46 GANONG ON ST. LAWEENCE 



They apply to Cape Breton fairly well, but they appear to me to refer really to the island 

 which appears on so many old maps just to the east of Cape Breton of to-day and which 

 has generally been taken to be Cape Breton Island itself. I have already pointed out that 

 this island was probably intended for a part of Cape Breton only, the real Cape Breton 

 being the large peninsula tolerably well shown upon nearly all of the old maps. Maps 

 before Cartier nearly all show an Isle St. John on the Atlantic coast in this region, and it 

 persists in some maps after Cartier.' 



But again, Allefonsce says, " Passing about twenty leagues west-north-west along the 

 coast you will find an island called St. Jean, in the centre of the district, and nearer to the 

 Breton region than Terra Nova. This entry to the Bretons is twelve leagues wide, and in 

 4*7° 30' north. From St. Jean's Island to Ascension [Anticosti] Island, in the Canadian 

 sea, it is forty leagues across, north-west by west. St. Jean and Bryon and Bird Island are 

 47" north." The grouping of Isle St. John with Bryon and Bird Islands, together with its 

 distance from Assumption (Anticosti) would place it where the Cabot map does, as the 

 largest of the Magdalenes. Yet its latitude is made half a degree lower (if the MS. be 

 translated correctly) than the entrance between Cape Breton Island and Cape Eay, when 

 it really is on about the same parallel. Part of Prince Edward Island is south of the 

 entrance, but in no other respect whatever does the latter correspond with Allefonsce's 

 references to Isle St John. We get no help from Allefonsce's maps, for the name does 

 not appear, and the only island" he has shown in the vicinity of Prince Edward Island is 

 a very small one without a name. These are all of Allefonsce's references to Isle St. John. 

 "What place he meant it for does not now concern us. It is enough that his own writings 

 and maps show that he did not refer to our Prince Edward Island. 



Our knowledge of the discovery and naming of Isle St. John by the Cabots, rests, so 

 far as I have been able to learn, solely upon the Latin and Spanish inscriptions on the 

 Cabot map, and upon the presence of the island itself on that map. There is no other evi- 

 dence known bearing upon the question. Dr. Deaue, in his splendid essay in "America," 

 Vol. Ill, on the Voyages of the Cabots, has summed up all of our knowledge of the 

 voyages of John Cabot and his sou, and in that work I find no other references to Isle St. 

 John, coming from the Cabots themselves. Dr. Deane translates the legend as follows : — 

 " This country was discovered by John Cabot, a Venetian, and Sebastian Cabot, his son, 

 in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ, MCCCCXCrV.[1494] on the 24th of June, in the 

 morning, which country they called ' primum visam' ; and a large island adjacent to it, 

 they named the island of St. John, because they discovered it on the same day." In the 

 Latin inscription ■' the words referring to the size of the island and its position are, " insula 

 quandâ magna ei oppositâ Insula diui loannis nominarfit," and in Spanish, " prima terra 

 vista, y a una isla'grâde que esta par la dha tierra." Isle St. John then, was simply oppo- 

 site QT before or near the first land seen * ; we are not told in what direction, nor how far. 



' "Oviedo in his description of the coast in 1537, shows no Icnowledge of the Gulf. He mentions an island of 

 St. John, but tliislay out in tlie Atlantic near Cape Breton, close to the Straits of Canso." De Costa, America, i v. 73. 



'' On fol. 181", America, iv. 75. 



" Given by Dr. Deane in Proo. Amer. Antiq. See. for April, 1867. 



' Several writers have niainlaiuod tliat tlie Cabots sailed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, turnoJ to the south, 

 went through Northumberland Strait, turned thence towards the Strait of Belle Isle, through which they passed. 

 Such is the opinion of J. C. Brevoort, (Historical Mag, Mar. 1868, xiii, 131-135), and Frederic Kidder, (N. E. 



