214 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



19. — Bate of the Landfall. 



While the actual landfall has been long the subject of controversy, 

 no one, until Mr. Harrisse has, so far as my reading goes, disputed the 

 date of June 24th. AVhen it is remembered that June 24 has been accepted 

 for 350 years — that it was accepted in Queen Elizabeth's time and before 

 that by men in England who personally knew Cabot in his later j^ears, 

 and that it has been challenged only in 1896, one naturally looks for 

 some new fact, or some new document, with which to disturb a belief 

 founded on the statement of a contemporary, a son of the chief actor and 

 a partner in the letters patent of 1496. No new evidence is adduced, and 

 the date seems now to be disputed on the general ground that Sebastian 

 Cabot was no sailor.mo geographer, but a humbug, an impostor, a char- 

 latan and a liar. But even if that were true, he had nothing to gain by 

 fixing upon June 24. No profound political import attaches to that day 

 more than to any other day, and it is incredible that even such a man as 

 some assume Cabot to have been, should have told a wanton lie about a 

 matter of so little moment. How, then, according to Mr. Harrisse, did 

 "this sjDurious date" ever come to be named. He says, in brief, that 

 " one Dr. Grajales, living at Puerto Santa Maria about 1544, concerning 

 " whom we do not know anything else," wrote the " matter of the 

 '* legends on the map, and that, when he saw on the map the name 

 " Island of St. John, he may well have assumed that the landfall was on 

 " St. John's day, and so wrote it down, because he knew of the almost 

 " constant practice in those days of naming islands after the saints on 

 " whose days they were discovered." Then, further : " That island 

 " was probably supposed by Sebastian Cabot, in 1544, to be identical 

 " with the one, also imaginaiy, when he (Cabot) then borrowed from a 

 " French map, where it is inserted in the same place." ^^^ 



Here is an aggregation of hypotheses upon which to challenge a 

 date in history accepted for 350 years ! Dr. Grajales, in this question, is 

 an utterly superfluous person, inasmuch as Mr. Harrisse acknowledges 

 that Sebastian Cabot supplied the information for the map and its append- 

 ages. The argument is really nothing more than that the date cannot be 

 true because Sebastian Cabot is the authority for it. Mr. Harrisse accepts 

 August 10, 1497, found in the public records of England, as the date of 

 John Cabot's arrival in London, on his return from his first voyage, and 

 he thinks that August 5 is 'a reasonable date to fix as that of his arrival 

 at Bristol ; and he believes also, from independent testimony, that the 

 date of Cabot's departure was the beginning of Ma3^ If, then, we fix 

 upon the 4th of May as the day of departure, whatever happened must 

 have occurred within 93 days. If the day celebrated at Halifax be the 

 right day, that will allow 50 days out and 432days for landing and the 



