210 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



island ; or the island, if ascertained, will identify the landfall. The con- 

 ditions are : 



Ist. The island was discovered the same day. 



2nd. It was opposite and near the landfall. 



3rd. The landfall upon the map, to which the legend refers, was at 

 the northeastern point of Cape Breton. 



I have shown (fig. 15) by a tracing from a photograph of the map 

 of 1544 that Cape Breton was the northeastern point. I am not trying 

 to demonstrate within a few miles where Cabot struck land. The fact, 

 however, is undoubted that Cajîe Breton is the easternmost point ; that 

 it was the first point to get a name ; that it was the best known point, 

 and that it has an island opposite and near to it, which, inside of seven 

 years after the first voyage and for 100 years subsequently, was called St. 

 John. If I say that Scatari island is St. John's island, I am only, after 

 all, repeating Pedro Eeinel, who drew it on his map in 1505 with its 

 name. 



I would call attention to the fact that no other landfall mentioned 

 •complies so fully with the conditions as Cape Breton. The word " island ' 

 -is in the singular number. If, then, near any place suggested there are 

 a number of islands, that place does not comply with the specified con- 

 ■ditions. In the version on the map engraved by Clement Adams, while 

 ■Sebastian Cabot was exercising in England that suj)ervision of nautical 

 affairs which pertained to his office, nothing is said of the size of the 

 island. It is simply " an island." The vei-sion on the 1544 map calls it 

 insulam quandam magnam, and the Spanish translation on the same map, 

 " una isla grande," shows that the island was by that writer supposed to 

 be large. On the only surviving copy of all the various editions of 

 Cabot's map, there is indeed a large island named St. John, which has 

 been shown at great length in my first paper (1894) to be in reality the 

 large central island of the Magdalen group. In the same paper, in Ap- 

 pendix F, I gave a series of tracings (repeated at the end of this paper) 

 which I still think absolutely demonstrate the correctness of my view. I 

 must refer the student to that paper, and remind him that I made no 

 new discovery. The opinion had been held by Markham ; and Ganong 

 in his most thorough investigation, had established it, and it was adopted 

 by Harrisse. This seems to me to be the clearest part of the whole con- 

 troversy, and it may be reduced to absolute certainty (see App. F) without 

 the help of assumptions, or postulates, or hypotheses of any kind what- 

 ■ever. To discuss that point here, however, would have the effect of a 

 digression, and I must revert to the main current of my present argu- 

 ment and call attention to two important facts. First, that the island 

 of the landfall was a single island, and while the coasts of Newfound- 

 land and Labrador are studded with many islands, this single island 

 in some way characterized the landfall ; and, second, that in the version 



