154 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



" mense numbers, consisting often of huge cubes, and not, as a rule, pre- 

 " seating the picturesque shapes they assume when seen farther south at 

 " a later date." That is about the time when Mr. Harrisse pictures the 

 little " Matthew" sailing leisurely along to Cape Chidley and back, the 

 crew hunting on shore and replenishing their stock of provisions.^' The 

 picture is idyllic, but here is the reality copied from a letter by the corres- 

 pondent in Newfoundland of a lai'ge Toronto daily newspaper. It is 

 dated September 9th, 189G : "This season the ice blockade, owing to 

 " inshore winds, remained on the coast (i.e., the Labrador coast) all the 

 " month of July, preventing hundreds of crafts from reaching their 

 " destination and hundreds of others from pursuing their operations, be- 

 *' cause the ice chilled the water and kept the fish out in the deeper 

 " leads, so that it was not till the first week in August that any quan- 

 " titles of fish really began to be taken." ^ From the table in Appendix 

 G to m}^ se'jond paper, it will be seen that at latitude 54"' the fish, in 

 favourable seasons, strike the coast on July 15, and from 56° to OS'' the 

 date is from July 28th to August 15th The weight of the argument 

 against Labrador is that, on the first voyage, no mention whatever is 

 made of ice, and, on the second, all the narratives record it as a new 

 phenomenon ; for the sailoi's of those days, accustomed to the eastern 

 Atlantic, had experienced nothing like it before, because the west coast 

 of Eui-ope is ke))t clear of ice by the Gulf stream. I have referred ta 

 Appendix A some farther notes upon the coast of Labrador, and I trust 

 that students of this subject will I'ead them and keep well in mind that the 

 Labrador landfall is supposed by those who support it to have been some- 

 where between Sandwich bay and Cape Chidley, that is from 53° 30' to 

 60° north latitude. I invite attention to the fact that the statements 

 here and in Appendix A are quotations, and that those who deny them 

 are contradicting not me, but sailors who are familiar with the coast, 

 and who wrote without reference to this controversy. They Avrote from 

 actual knowledge and not with subjective views of what ought to be 

 there to make a suitable landfall. 



While it seemed to me that I had demonstrated the impossibility of 

 such a landfall as John Cabot describes having occurred on June 2'4th on 

 any part of the Labrador coast, Mr. Harrisse urges, both in his last book, 

 " John Cabot," and in his '• Forum " article, that " the date of the land- 

 " fall must be set back into ISIay, or, at least, two or three weeks before 

 " June 24th, to allow Cabot the necessary time to get back to Bristol." 

 He thinks that the crew "rested awhile and devoted some time to refit 

 " or repair their diminutive craft, as well as to take in wood and water 

 " and renew the stock of victuals, which could only be done by hunting 

 " and salting game on the mainland." ^'^ 



In my paper of 1806 I fell into an error, which Mr. Harrisse has 

 very properly pointed out. At p. 55 of his "John Cabot," in connection 



