PEOCEEDmGS FOR 1894. XVII 



graph previously mentioned, as well as in an elaborate paper which is to be read by Dr. S. E. Dawson 

 before the second section at the present meeting. One fact is quite certain, that it is to John Cabot 

 must be given the honour of having first landed and planted the English flag on the eastern coast of 

 North America, very probably at Cape North in the Dominion, or at some other point of British 

 North America. The landfall may be in disjiute, but not the fact of the discovery, under English 

 auspices, of eastern North America, and of (he Atlantic seaboard of the United States. If Columbus 

 was honoured in 189H, why should not John Cabot also receive his meed of recognition three years 

 hence for his discoveiy which gave England her first claim to territoiy in the New World, of which 

 the Dominion of Canada, and Newfoundland forms so large and important a portion at the present 

 day ? The matter is submitted to the consideration of the Second Section of English Literature and 

 History, as well as to that of the various historical societies of the provinces of the Dominion. Of 

 the claims of John Cabot to honour from Englishmen and other colonial descendants in North America, 

 Mr. Clements R. Markham the eminent geographical scholai-, says with truth, " John Cabot was the 

 great navigator, the explorer and pioneer, who lighted English enteiprise across the Atlantic. He 

 was second only to his illustrious countryman as a discoverer, and his place is in the forefront of the 

 van of the long and glorious roll of leaders of English maritime exploration." 



XXI. A Tribute to Francis Parkman. 



Since the last meeting of the Royal Society we have to record the death of one of its most hon- 

 oured corresponding members, Francis Parkman, whose great series of historical narratives on 

 "France and England in North America," — a series of eleven volumes — has connected his name to 

 all time with the annals of tlie continent, and especially with those of the Dominion of Ciinada. It 

 was he who, above all other writers, first showed the world the picturesque and even diamatic 

 features of the two hundred and sixty years or so that had passed since DeMonts landed at Stc. Croix, 

 and Champlain founded the ancient capital of Quebec. Dulness and Canadian history were too often 

 considered 83Mionyraou8, and with some reason, before the publication of his "Pioneers of France in 

 the New World" in 1865, or fourteen j'ears after the appearance of his "Conspiracy of Pontiac," 

 the first being the beginning, and the latter the end of his series of nari-ativos. The only meritorious 

 history of the French regime that had appeared before 1865 was that by (iaineau, a French Cana- 

 dian ; but its circulation was chiefly among his compatriots, and the imperfect and ill done English 

 translation that had been made did not tend to make him popular among English speaking peoples. 

 The first volume of Ferland's excellent work had been printed in 1861, and the second in 1865, but it 

 is safe to say that very few persons, even in English Canada, are yet aware of its value. In the United 

 States neither Garneau nor Ferland had any readers except a few historical students. But de82)ite 

 their undoubted merit, these French Canadian authors can never captivate the reader like Parkman 

 with his power of vivid narrative, his charm of style, his enthusiasm for his subject, his remai-kable 

 descriptions of historic scones and places, which are so manj' pen pictuies of the past. To his great 

 work, which he conceived in the commencement of his manhood, he devoted his life with a rare 

 fidelity, industry, and patience that have never been surpassed in the domain of letters. The record 

 of those years during which he laboured to accomplish what he made essentially his mission is one of 

 struggle — not with ill fortune, or straitened means, for he was hap])ily well supplied with the world's 

 goods, but with physical infirmity to which many other men of less indomitable purpose would have 

 yielded. The storj' of his life should be often told to animate the j'outh of our country to patient 

 effort, whatever maj^ be their vocation in life. " He who shall tell that story of noble endeavour," 

 writes one who knew him well, Justin Winsor, whom the Eoyal Society gladly welcomes to-day, 

 "must carry him into the archives of Canada and France, and portray him peering with another's 

 eyes. He must depict him in his wanderings over the length and breadth of a continent wherever a 

 French adventurer had set foot. He must track him to many a spot hallowed by the sacrifice of a 

 Jesuit. He must plod with him the portage where the burdened trader had hearkened for the lurk- 



Trop. 1894. c. 



