XXIV ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



have ever received. The intrepid sailor of St. Malo, Jacques Cartier, has 

 his memory perpetuated in the nomenclature of the valley he first dis- 

 covered and by a noble monument on the banks of the St. Charles, close 

 to the wails of Quebec, ancient Stadacona, where he passed his first 

 winter in Canada. Now, four hundred years after Cabot's discovery of 

 the continent of Xorth America, an effort is at last made to pay him 

 honours. 



On Thui-sday, the 24th day of the present month — the probable date 

 of John Cabot's first sight of northeastern America — the Governor- 

 General of Canada, the Earl of Aberdeen, will unveil a brass tablet which 

 the Royal Society of Canada has had made with a suitable inscription in 

 commemoration of the American voyages of the famous Italian navigator, 

 John Cabot. This tablet is to be placed in the entrance hall of the old 

 stone Province House, in which the representatives of the ancient colony 

 of Xova Scotia have annually met for the greater part of the present 

 century. The Royal Society have very properly chosen the city of 

 Halifax on the Atlantic shores of the Dominion for the celebration of a 

 great historical event. In view of the controversies with respect to the 

 land-fall of 1497, Halifax has been considered as a neutral ground on 

 which all the disputants can happily meet without giving up their 

 respective theories. The Royal Society does not identify itself with any 

 of these theories but calls upon all the disputants to meet on a common 

 ground of action and join in paying a just tribute to a great navigator, 

 whose claims to fame are tersely set forth in an inscription whose his- 

 torical truth will be genei-ally admitted by the student of those old times. 



On a beautiful specimen of brass work, decorated by the arms of 

 England, Bristol and Venice, and other appropriate emblems we find 

 these emphatic words : ^ 



This Tablet is in Honour op the Famous 

 Italian Navigator, John Cabot, 



Who, under the authority of letters patent of Henry VII., dire<ting 

 him to conquer, occupy and possess for England any lands he might find 

 " in whatever part of the world they be," sailed in a Bristol ship, ". The 

 Matthew," and first planted the flags of England and Venice in the 

 month of June, lJf.97, on the northeastern seaboard of North America, 

 and by his discoveries in this and the following year gave to England a 

 claim upon the Continent which the colonizing spirit of her sons made 

 good in later times. 



This Tablet was placed in this hall by the Royal Society of Canada, 



in the month of June, 1897, ichen the British Empire was celebrating the 



Sixtieth Anniversary of the accession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, 



during whose beneficent reign the Dominion of Canada has extended 



1 For illustration of tablet, see Cabot Celebration, infra. 



