[s. B. DAWSON] THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 213 



To make this clear I have repeated the extract of the American part 

 of the map on a larger scale, and thus it will become plain that the infor- 

 mation in the legend applies generally to the whole region, and is not an 

 exception in that respect to all the others. 



And, finally, I come to the positive portion of my argument, the 

 persistency on the maps of an island of St. John in the Atlantic and close 

 to the easternmost jioint of Cape Breton. In my first paper I dwelt 

 upon this point at great length, and gave tracings of very many maps. 

 Some of these are, for other reasons, repeated here (the Majollo map, p. 

 177 ; Lok's, p. 197). Mr. Harrisse is a witness to this persistency. It is a 

 fact, impossible to explain away, that from the very earliest period, A.D. 

 1505, for one hundred years, the east point of Cape Breton is laid down 

 with an attendant island, which, when named, is always St. John. At 

 page 107 of Mr. Harrisse's *' John Cabot," the following passage confirms 

 my proposition : " So far back as the map constructed by Pedro Keinel, 

 " in 1504 or 1505, we find to the east of the peninsula of Cape Breton, in 

 '* the latitude of 49° according to its scale, a large isle denominated ' Sam 

 *' ' Joha.' This island, which as such is fictitious, may owe its carto- 

 " graphical origin to a misconception of the great peninsula which 

 *' stretches into the Atlantic from the southernmost or Sydney region of 

 " Cape Breton island, to which it is joined by an extremely narrow 

 " isthmus. We find it in all Lusitanian maps and their derivatives, in- 

 " eluding those of Dieppe, and with the names of ' I" de S. Joan ' (Mag- 

 <'giolo of 1527); ' Y. de S. Juhan ' (Wolfenbuttel B.) ; nameless in 

 " Viegas's, but Y de St. Jehâ in the Ilarleyan, and Sam Joam in 

 " Freire's portolano." 



There was, indeed, a flying island called St. John Estevan far out 

 in the ocean, and many others, as Antillia (the Island of the Seven Cities), 

 St. Brandan and Mansatanaxio. They flew off the map eventually be- 

 cause they never had any objective existence, but this island of St. John 

 never flew, and there it is yet, in the Atlantic, opposite Cape Breton 

 where it always was. I cannot repeat the whole of my argument of 1894, 

 but I would ask the reader to refer to what I have said there under this 

 head, particularly to the argument from Lok's map of 1582. How 

 utterly misleading, then, it is to talk of the Cape Breton theor}' as a new 

 theory, and to associate with it Dr. Harvey's name and mine — to plead 

 an immemorial tradition for two distinct places in Newfoundland— a 

 tradition now French, now English, now Portuguese, when, in 1505, in 

 1527, in 1544, in 1582, in 1600, and in many intervening dates, the land- 

 fall of Cape Breton laid down in 1544 and 1582 is identified by the island 

 of St. John. 



