62 SAMUEL EDWAED DAWSON ON THE 



was it possible for liim to sail around the gulf and return. To Canadians who know the 

 gulf, it is impossible, even if there had been time to do it that he could have sailed round 

 it and not have left some indication of its unique geographical features. He could 

 not have passed the grand estuary of the river opening to the southwest — to the very 

 direction of Cathay — without mentioning it and without returning to it on his second 

 voyage. If he saw, as he must have seen according to that theory, such an avenue opening 

 towards the heart of Asia some tradition of it could not fail to have reached us — some trace 

 of it could not fail to have been recorded on the maps. Of all the theories of John Cabot's 

 voyages that one will appear to a Canadian the most astonishing ; as it did to Kohl who 

 had travelled in Canada and knew something of what the name river St. Lawrence implies. 

 Markham, in his introduction to the Hakluyt Society volume for 1893, makes some 

 excellent observations in relation to. the voyage of 1497, and no one could be a better 

 authority than he on such a subject. He thinks that Cabot was compelled by contrai-y 

 winds to make the northing of the first few days. That north course might be supposed to 

 have lirought liim to the latitude of 53^ or 54', well north upon the west coast of Ireland, 

 then turning to the west he would have struck for the coast of Cathay. For a good 

 portion of the distance the drift of the ocean is to the northeast as far at least as longitude 

 40 W. Then he would enter the Arctic or Lal)rador current which sets south on the banks 

 off Newfoundland at the rate- of one mile an hour, but the lee-way assumed hj Markham 

 across the ocean would not be always south ; for southwest and southerly winds are very 

 common in June, and his lee-way would as often be north as south. The fact, however, 

 Avhich seems to have passed unnoticed is that, in longitude 23'^ W., he would have passed 

 the point of no variation-'** and have quickly reached a region where the variation of the 

 compass has l)een shown to be 15-' W. On a supposed western course from thence he would 

 be actually steering a point and a half soutli of west. In those daj's the incidents of the voy- 

 age of Columbus recorded in his journal could not have quickly spread throughout Europe, 

 and Cabot would have had to make his own experiences with the absolutely new pheno- 

 menon of magnetic variation. All these circumstances render it in the highest degree 

 probable that he passed Cape Race without seeing it. Then his course would bring him 

 certainly not to Cape ISTorth, but to the eastern point of the island, to Cape Breton itself ; 

 so that Harrisse in his work on the Cabots was far more nearly right than in his later book 

 on the discovery of America. If Cabot passed Cape Race and the islands of St. Pierre and 

 Miquelon without seeing them he would have been obliged to change his course sharply to 

 the northwest ■"' to reach Cape Forth ; and, in fact, the land both of Cape Breton and 

 Newfoundland is so high that, to make Cape North, without first seeing one coast or the 

 other, would require a good deal of nautical skill and a good modern chart ; moreover the 

 current out of St. Paul strait sets on the starboard bow of an approaching vessel sometimes 

 as strongly with the prevailing westerly wind as two miles an hour.-"* Cape Breton, as may 

 be seen by Hore's voyage in 1536, was a natural landfall for a vessel missing Cape Race ; 

 and so generally recognized as sucli that in the sailing directions for Sir Humphrey Gilbert's 

 fleet it was laid down as the next rendezvous in case the ships should not meet at Cape Race. 



VI. The Second Voyage, 1498. 



I might here borrow the quaint phrase of Herodotus and say " now I have done speaking 

 of" John Cabot. He has, beyond doubt, discovered the eastern coast of this our Canada, 



