[s. K. DAWSON] THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 143 



In my second paper I said that 1 had two objects : One was to estab- 

 lish the landfall of 1497 and the other to dispel the fog that was gather- 

 ing around our geographical history in the shape of a theory that Cabot 

 had discovered and named Prince Edwai'd Island. It is scarcely fair to 

 make this out to mean that I admit that " I set out to jirove " that Prince 

 Edward's Island was not Cabot's St. John, and then to add that it was 

 "a very unfavourable attitude for a dispassionate consideration of his- 

 " torical evidence." " It is stating, in eftect, that when I first undertook 

 the inquiry I did so with a preconceived determination to prove a 

 conclusion antecedentl}' formed on other than historical grounds. Ihave 

 made no such admission. My distinguished critic had, in writing his 

 address, motives of a pi-ecisely similar kind, namely to establish a different 

 landfall and to prove that Prince Edward Island icas Cabot's St. John. 

 There is no ground for assuming that, in the preliminary process of 

 examining and w^eighing evidence, mj' mind was in any more iinfavourable 

 condition than that of any other writer who seeks to place the results of 

 his studies before the world. 



5. — Advocates of Cape Breton and Labrador. 



In a criticism of Archbishop O'Brien's address Judge Prowse states 

 that " the claim of Cape Breton is utterly untenable ; opposed alike to 

 " common sense and reason and ail the contemporary records." ^'^ It is 

 therefore only right to repeat that it was the first place ever mentioned 

 as the landfall, and that a large number of very eminent men have held 

 and advocated that very theory. It has, moreover, been the prevailing 

 theory during the past forty years. I shall have space to mention only 

 a few of those persons " wilfully obstinate or lamentably ignorant of the 

 " value of historical evidence," '^ who have held it. There was Mons. 

 d' A vezac— foremost name in the Geographical Society of France — whose 

 numerous writings on the geography and cartography of the Middle 

 Ages are known and sought of all students. The study of his life was 

 the North Atlantic and the discoveries of its early sailors and his influ- 

 ence pervades all the literature of the question. Then there was Dr. 

 Charles Deane, of Boston, author of the treatise on the Cabot voyages in 

 volume III. of Winsors history and a life-long student of early American 

 geography. He had made, at his own expense, twelve complete photo- 

 graphic copies of the Sebastian Cabot map of 1544 of the full size of the 

 original and deposited them in twelve great libraries in the United States. 

 Another "absurd " person is Elisée Eéelus, author of the great work on 

 geography republished by the Appletons," and of many other important 

 works — the greatest living French authority on geography. Among 

 these persons " lamentably ignorant of historical evidence " was the late 

 Dr. Justin Winsor, author of the '"Narrative and Critical History of 



