60 SAMUEL EDWARD DAWSON ON THE 



lield to separate Europe from Asia '- it may be taken as a vague term for Asiatic lands. 

 That the land discovered was sujjposed to be a part of Asia appears very clearly from the 

 same letters. It was in the territory of the Grand Cam.^' The land was good and the 

 climate temperate ^* and Cabot intended on his next voyage, after occupying that place, to 

 proceed further westwards until he should arrive at the longitude of Japan which island he 

 evidently thought to be south of his landfall and near the equator. 



It should 1)0 carefully noted that in all the circumstances on record which are indisput- 

 ably rcferaljle to tliis first voyage nothing has been said of ice or of any notable extension of 

 daylight. These are tlie marks of the second voyage ; for if anything unusual had existed 

 in the length t)f the day it would have been at its maximum on midsummer's day, June 24, 

 the day he made land. Nothing is reported in these letters which indicates a high latitude. 

 The shore of Labrador is a waste region of rocks, swamps and mountains. Lieut. Gordon 

 steaming along the coast in the "Alert" })assed, on June 30th, 1886, large numbers of 

 small icebergs. He met the Held ice on July 2nd at hit. 56^ and from hit. 58 ' to Cape 

 Chidley it was packed tight all along for fifteen miles out to sea. Even inside the straits of 

 Belle-Isle it is so barren and forbidding as to call forth Cartier's oft-cited remark that " it 

 was like the laud God gave to Cain." The coast of Labrador is not the place to invite a 

 second voyage, if it be once seen ; l)ut the climate of Cape Ereton is very pleasant in early 

 summer and the country is well wooded. 



From the contemporary documents relating specially to the first voyage it is be^-ond 

 question that Cabot saw no human being on the coast though he brought back evidences of 

 their presence at some previous time. It is beyond doubt also on the same authority that 

 the voyage lasted not longer than three months and that provisions gave out so that he had 

 not time to land on the return voyage. It was, in fact, a reconnoitering expedition to 

 prepare the way for a greater effort and establish confidence in the existence of land across 

 the ocean easily reached from England. The distance sailed is given by Soncino at 400 

 leagues ; but Pasqualigo, writing to Venice, gives it at 700 leagues, equivalent to 2,226 

 miles, which is very nearly the distance between Bristol and Cape Breton as now estimated. 



All these circumstances concerning the first voyage are derived from John Cabot's own 

 reports and are extracted from documents dated previous to the return of the second 

 expedition and therefore are, of necessity, free from admixture with extraneous incidents. 

 I have not referred to the map of 1544 because I propose to consider it bj' itself The 

 early historians who are usually cited throw no light upon the first voyage. Peter Martyr 

 in 1516, Gomara in 1542 and Ramnsio in 1550 are exclusively concerned with Sebastian 

 Cabot. They know nothing of John Cabot and his voyage and whatever dates they give, 

 the particulars they recite stamp their narratives as relating solely to the second voyage. 

 Tliey, in fact, seem to know only of one. Antonio Galvano an experienced Portuguese 

 sailor and cosmographer writing in 1563, like the others, knows of one voyage only which 

 he fixes in 1496. He interweaves, like them, in his narrative many circumstances of the second 

 voyage, but it is im[)ortantto note that from some independent source is given the landfall at 

 45°, the latitude very nearly of Cape Breton on the island of Cape Breton. Another point is 

 also recorded in the letters that, on the return voyage, Cabot passed two islands to the right 

 which the shortness of his provisions prevented him from examining. This note should not 

 be considered identical with the statement recorded by Soncino in his first letter ; for this 

 last writer evidently means to indicate the land which Cabot found and examined — he says 



