[HOWLEY ] THE LABRADOR BOUNDARY QUESTION 293 
from Canada at a place called Rigolette in Hamilton Inlet, near Lake 
Melville. The Minister of Finance of Newfoundland has placed a 
customs officer there and collected duties. The Government of Quebec 
has protested against this exaction, claiming the place as a part of her 
territory. 
We will now make a short digression into the early history of the 
discovery and subdivisions of British North America, which will help 
us to a solution of the disputed points. 
The northern parts of the New World were discovered by the Cabots 
(John and Sebastian) in 1497, and were claimed for England, while 
Columbus was bringing in new territory to the Kingdom of Spain to 
the southward. For over a century England took no interest in the 
new lands discovered by the Cabots of Bristol. 
Immediately after Cabot’s second voyage of 1498, viz., in A.D. 
1500, the Portuguese Navigator Cortereal re-discovered and claimed 
these northern lands for the Crown of Portugal, and some Portuguese 
colonies were founded in Newfoundland and (what is now) Cape Breton. 
These colonies failed, and the French were the next to take possession 
of the outlying portion of the new countries, those nearest Europe, and 
first encountered by outward bound voyagers. France pushed her 
claims westward until at length she held undisputed ownership of not 
cnly Newfoundland and the neighbouring countries but all North 
America; stretching indefinitely westward and southward along the 
Mississippi Valley to New Orleans. It was not until the year 1583, 
nearly a hundred years after Cabot’s discovery, that England woke up 
te the importance of taking a part in the great enterprises of western 
colonization. In that year Sir Humphry Gilbert, fortified by Letters 
Patent from Queen Elizabeth, took possession of St. John’s New- 
foundland and claimed all the surrounding country by right of British 
discovery. But the enterprise was abortive. Other such attempts 
followed, as that of Lord Baltimore in 1620-1, and the occupation of 
Nova Scotia, the Acadie of the French, by Sir William Alexander in 
1621. 
War soon broke out between England and France and lasted with- 
out much intermission for over a hundred years, until the 
Treaty of Paris, February 10th, 1763. 
By that Treaty France gave up ail claim to her North American 
Possessions, retaining only, under certain conditions, the Islands of St. 
Pierre and Miquelon and her fishing rights on a portion of the coasts 
