PROCEEDINGS FOR 1897 CXIII 



chart, as if he had sailed in a modern ocean greyhound, supplied with 

 the most recent nautical apparatus, aware of the various Atlantic cur- 

 rents, able to take the correct longitude of his position every day, and 

 making for a well-known goal. If we read the log kept by a navigator 

 many years later, we shall realize how immensely ditt'erent was the fact 

 from the fancy picture painted b}" nearly every writer who has treated 

 of the voyage of 1497. And the strange thing is, each writer has been 

 able so to manipulate the compass, or to turn the tiller at an opportune 

 moment, or to find some new angle of variation, which enables him to 

 triumphantly land Cabot at the spot desired. Authentic descriptions of 

 the places discovered are of very minor importance to the learned 

 theorize!-. The reality, however, is this : we are to see a little schooner 

 buffetted about for six or seven weeks on an unknown ocean, making, as 

 well as it can, towards the west, but with no objective point in view, and 

 no accurate means of knowing the longitude. The master is a valiant 

 seaman, but he is on untried waters, without a chart, and consequently, 

 ignorant of currents, both on the deep and near the shore. Now we have 

 the fact that this schooner, after '• having wandered much," finally ap- 

 proached the shores of Cape Breton. Could it have wandered into the gulf? 

 What more easy or more probable ? Having been cai'ried to the southeast 

 of Cape Eace by the Arctic Current, perhaps, also, by the wind, Cabot 

 resumed, as soon as a favourable breeze sprang up, his westward or, for a 

 time, a northwest course. Soon he would be caught by the current 

 which sets inward in a north-northwest direction on the east side of 

 Cabot's Straits. The resultant course would be necessarily some point be- 

 tween west and north. Unless the breeze were very strong it would be 

 about northwest. "Were he to continue this coui'se he would run into the 

 Magdalen Islands. But a strong current sets outwai'd on the western side 

 of the straits ; caught in this the ship would fall otf to the south whilst still 

 advancing westward. "VYe are not making unfounded assumptions. The 

 currents are there, and their effects would be such as we have described. 

 We have it on the authority of a captain ofone of our ocean mail steamers, 

 that it is quite possible even now, when the location of the land on each 

 side is well known, and consequently looked for, to pass in the straits on 

 a fairly clear day without sighting land ; and also that a vessel steering 

 west from near Cape Eay would sight land in the gulf, southwest of 

 Cape North. Two other captains who know the gulf thoroughly, have in- 

 formed me that you may pass in on what may be called a clear day with- 

 out seeing land on either side. All this proves the reasonableness of our 

 position ; facts to be adduced establish its absolute correctness. Having 

 wandered into the gulf they saw earlj- in the morning, land, probably 

 Mount Squirrel, 1230 feet high, to the southwest of Cape North. We 

 know they landed and set up a cross and the English flag ; but we know 

 too, from Pasqualigo, that through fear or doubtful of their reception by 



Proc. 1897. H. 



