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ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



and how the discovery was made. The description applies all over the 

 region, and two bears ai'e figured just under the Arctic circle, where bears 

 are still, and yet some persist in bringing white bears down to the land- 

 fall, wherever they place it. That is not the fault of the map. It is 

 plain enough there. Here, then, is positive testimony, and everything 

 tends to corroborate it. If Sebastian Cabot marks in 1544 the same 

 point on the coast as the "prima vista," that does not derogate from the 

 statement of John Cabot on La Cosa's map in 1500. Let it be granted 

 that Sebastian Cabot was a liar up to the n}^ j^ower of Ananias, the 

 argument is unaffected. Suppose there was no such person, the evidence 

 of La Cosa's map is sufficient. But if to this evidence be added the de- 

 scription given of the country and other particulars recorded by the 

 contemporary letters, the presumption in favour of Cape Breton is 

 very greatly strengthened. It is strangely assumed that, because Sebas- 

 tian Cabot in 1544 said the landfall was at Cape Breton, therefore it 

 was somewhere else — at Labrador, Bonavista, Cape St. John, Mount 

 Squirrel — anywhere, in fact, but not where he said it was. 



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Fig. 14.— Michael Lok's Map, from Hakluyt's "Divers Voyages," A.D. 1582, 



In my firet paper and in one of the appendices I discussed in detail 

 the different editions of this map which existed in the sixteenth century. 



