194 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



" raandy and England. The successful explorations accomplished by 

 " Jacques Cartier from 1534 until 1543 had been followed by the plant- 

 *• ing of French colonies. The part selected was not Labrador, on which, 

 " in all maps of the period, was inscribed the uninviting legend, ' No ay 

 " ' in ella cosa de provecho ' (here there is nothing of utiUty). On the 

 " contrary, the French had chosen the country around the Gulf of 

 " St. Lawrence and Cape Breton, which the reports of Cartier and Rober- 

 ** val to Francis I. represented to be a beautiful and fertile country, with 

 " rich copper mines, fine ports, and the most navigable waters in the 

 *' world. 



" Under the circumstances, the cartographical statement of Sebas- 

 " tian Cabot, as embodied in the planisphere of 1544, ma}'' well have been 

 *' a suggestion of British claims and a bid for the favour of the king of 

 " England. To place near the entrance of the Grulf of St. Lawrence the 

 " landfall of 1497, was tantamount to declaring that region to be English 

 " dominion, as the discovery had been accomplished by vessels sailing 

 " under the British flag." 



Much of this is absolutely novel to Canadians. We know of no such 

 colonies round the gulf or on the island of Cape Breton. What really 

 happened is summarized in a sentence by Abbé Ferlasd ^"" — the most 

 accurate of our historians : " Après le retour de Eoberval en France, il 

 " s'écoula bien des années, pendant lesquelles le Canada semble avoir été 

 " complètement perdu de vue par la cour des rois très chrétiens. Néan- 

 *' moins la grande baye et l'entrée du fleuve St-Laurent continuaient 

 ^' d'être fréquentées par les Malouins, les Normands et les Basques qui 

 ^' remontaient jusqu'à Tadoussac pour y faire la traite des pelleteries." 



The history of Canada as we know it, is that Cartier's and Rober- 

 val's expeditions were failures, and that the first successful colony 

 inside of the gulf was led by Champlain in 1608, when he founded 

 ■Quebec. The first settlement in Nova Scotia was at Port Royal, sixty 

 j^ears later than A.D. 1544, and as for Cape Breton, the old names of the 

 l)ay8 — Baye des Espagnols, Havre aux Anglois, St. Anne's bay, Niganis — 

 show that English, French, Spanish and Portuguese fished in contiguous 

 harbours. Settlement there was much later than at Quebec. The pages 

 of Hakluj't show that vessels of all nations resorted to the Ramea islands 

 in the gulf, and no exclusive claim is disclosed by England anywhere in 

 Baccalaos until Sir Humphrey Grilbert, in 1583, forty years later, took 

 formal possession of Newfoundland. They never claimed within the 

 gulf. This is very clearly stated by Father Biard in the Jesuit Rela- 

 tions, A. D. 1611-16. He says : " The English lay no claim to all of New 

 " France. They do not dispute the shores of the gulf and river St. 

 " Lawrence. They claim up to Campseau and the island of Cape Breton." 

 Returning, however, to the strictures of Mr. Harrisse upon Sebas- 

 tian Cabot in relation to this map of 1544, 1 would remark that it is mis- 



