[s. E. DAWSON] THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 141 



of the whole subject and the wide acceptance of the revived belief that 

 the landfall was on Cape Breton island. These two schools alone occu- 

 pied the field in the long controversy which arose ; because, in fact, 

 nothing was found to reinforce the opinion that the landfall was in New- 

 Ibundland, while no evidence of a positive nature had at any time been put 

 forward to establish it. Very little, therefore, concerning Newfoundland 

 appeared in the very~ extensive literature not only of books, but of re- 

 views and magazines, in whose pages for the past forty 3'ears the con- 

 troversy has been carried on. 



3. — Recent Revival of the Question. 



The discussion, revived in the Royal Society of Canada in 1894, was 

 carried on in Newfoundland with singular aci-iinony. This was unex- 

 pected, because the question had previously been considered solely as a 

 historical one. My own attention had been specially drawn to it in 1884, 

 when, as local secretary to the British Association, I was called upon to 

 prepare a "Handbook of the Dominion " for the meeting at Montreal. 

 The secretary of the Geographical Section wrote me then a kind note to 

 say that the landfall (Bonavista) indicated as that of the first voyage 

 "was not in accord with the results of modern research," which placed 

 it on the island of Cape Breton. My previous studies had been in other 

 fields of Canadian history, but since that time, as opportunity offered, I 

 went over the whole literature of the Cabot voyages and I was surprised 

 to find that there was no positive historical evidence for the theory of a 

 landfall at Bonavista and in my paper I thought it right to sa}- so. It 

 was not accurate, therefore, to inform a Newfoundland audience " that 

 " the learned Dr. Dawson, as he himself declares, has only recently taken 

 " up the study of the Cabot voyages." '^ What I did say was : " That for 

 " many years, under the influence of current traditions and cursory read- 

 " ing, I believed the landfall of John Cabot to have been in Newfound- 

 " land; but a closer study of the original authorities led me to concur in 

 " the view which places it at ('ape Breton." ^ The impressions conveyed 

 by these two hentences are not identical. 



While, then, for more than sixty years, this question has been banal 

 among scholars, I was not able to find in Dr. Justin Win.sors encyclopa'dic 

 treasury of American historical research, or in Mr. Harrisse's numerous 

 and exhaustive writings, any serious discussion of the Bonavista landfall ; 

 and I quickly discovered that the reason was because nothing in the 

 original records suggested it. When Mr. Ilarrisse abandoned the Cape 

 Breton theory of his first book,* and, in 1892,^ adopted another, he passed 

 over to Labrador as the only alternative. 



When I wrote my first paper in 1S94, Judge Prowse's "History of 

 Newfoundland " had not been published, and, when it appeared, I searched 



