VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS IN 1497 AND 1498. 53 



landfall because it bears, plainly inscribed upon tliat island, the words prima t terra vi.sfa, and 

 the legends which are around the map identity beyond question that as the landfall of the 

 first voyage. Dr. Deane, in " Winsor's Narrative and Critical History," supports this view. 

 Markham in his introduction to the volume of the Hakluyt Society for 1893 also accepts it 

 and our own honorary secretary in his learned and exhaustive monograph on Cape Breton '" 

 inclines to the same theoi-y. 



I do not propose, in this portion of my paper, to discuss the ditJicult problems of this 

 map. For many years, under the influence of current traditions and cursory reading, I 

 believed the landfall of John Cabot to have been in Newfoundland ; l)ut a closer study of 

 the original authorities has led me to concur in the view which places it somewhere on the 

 island of Cape Breton, and this view I shall endeavour, in the first instance, to establish 

 without recourse to tlie disputed map of 1544. Tliat map has, I conceive, introduced into 

 current belief a very serious error l)y patting forth, as is supposed. Prince Edward Island as 

 the island of St. John of Cabot's first voyage. This error is gaining ground every day as it 

 is passing into all our histories " and guide books. In the course of this paper I shall 

 endeavour to explain the reasons which move me to dissent from it. And while it seems 

 clear that the landfall of 1497 was on the island of Cape Breton, I shall endeavour to show 

 that it was not at Cape North, luit rather at the easternmost point of the island at or near 

 Cape Breton itself In short it will, I think, appear that the more the attention is fixed 

 upon Sebastian Cabot the more we shall think of Labrador ; but when John Cabot alone is 

 considered we shall incline to believe that the landfall was at Cape Breton. 



III. The First and Second Voyages contrasted, 1497 and 1498. 



At the very threshold of an inquiry into the ^)/'(//((/ tierra vista, or landfall of 1497, it is 

 before all things necessary to distinguish sharply, in every recorded detail, between the first 

 and second voyages. I venture to think that, if this had always been done, much confusion 

 and controversy Avould have been avoided. It was not done by the older writers, and the 

 writers of later years have followed them without sufficiently observing that the authorities 

 they were building upon were referring almost solely to the second voyage. Even when 

 some occasional detail of the first voyage was introduced the circumstances of the second 

 voyage were interwoven and became dominant in the narrative, so that the impression of 

 one voyage onlj' remains upon the mind. "We must therefore always remember the 

 antithesis which exists between them. Thus — the first voyage was made in one small vessel 

 with a crew of eighteen men '' — the second witli five ships and three hundred men.''' The 

 first voyage was undertaken with John Cabot's own resources — the second with the royal 

 authority to take six ships and their outfit on the same conditions as if for the king's 

 service. " The first voyage was a private venture — the second an official expedition. " 

 The first voj^age extended over three months and was provisioned for that period only, " 

 the second was victualled for twelve months "^ and extended over six months at least ; for 

 how much longer is not known. The course of the first voyage was south of Ireland, then 

 for a while north and afterwards west, with the pole star ^' on the right hand. The course 

 of the second, until land was seen, was north,'"^ into northern seas, towards the north pole, 

 in the direction of Iceland, '•' to the cape of Labrador, at 58^ north latitude. On the first 

 voyage no ice was reported — on the second the leading features were bergs -" and floes of 



