216 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



documents of ice. Of course, John Cabot would not have mentioned it if 

 his landfall had been at Cape Breton on June 24, for the good reason that 

 he would not see any, but Mr, Harrisse sends him up to Labrador in 54° 

 to 60°. and omits to take into account the ice there. 



Let it be supposed that Mr. Harrisse is right, and the landfall was, 

 to quote his words, " between Cape Sandwich and Cape Chidley," we 

 shall be in the midst of difficulty, for how did Cabot's little cock- boat, the 

 *' Matthew," get across the outer stream of Arctic ice, 50 to 100 miles 

 wide, coming down along the Labrador coast, far outside of the ice which 

 sets against the shore and fills the bays ? (See Appendix A.) 



Mr. Harrisse himself suggests a solution of the problem when he 

 says : ^^ " Either the landfall in 1497 was not effected on the 24th of 

 " June,or,co7itrary to Sebastian Cabot's asseverations, both cartographical 

 " and descriptive, only a very limited portion of the coast of the new 

 " world was visited on that occasion." 1 accept the latter alternative, for 

 I have maintained that the first voyage was merely a reconnaissance, only 

 I cannot find that Sebastian Cabot said an^^thing to the contrary, and in 

 this passage is again evident the confusion of the two voyages, which I 

 strove at such length to disentangle in 1894, The asseverations of Sebas- 

 tian Cabot referred to the second voyage, and placed the landfall in a 

 region of ice, and so tallied with his official duty in not compromising the 

 Spanish view of the ownership of all the habitable portion of the west- 

 ern world up to the line of demarcation where the claims of Portugal 

 commenced. 



But, beyond all this, it is inaccurate to say that the date we are cele- 

 brating rests exclusively on a statement made by Dr. Grajales, or even on 

 the map of 1544 at Paris ; because the map was only discovered in 1843, 

 and Dr. Grajales was only discovered in 1892. It has rested for 300 years 

 upon numerous maps referred to by writers in Queen Elizabeth's time, 

 and notably upon one map which hung up in the queen's gallery at 

 Westminster, These maps were stated, by Hakluyt and all other writers 

 of that day, to have been made by Sebastian Cabot. Hakluyt, in his 

 " Western Planting,'" written in 1584, while Clement Adams was alive, 

 says: "And the day of the moneth is also added in his (Cabot's) owne 

 " mappe, which is in the queene's privie gallerie at Westminster, the 

 " copie whei-eof was set oute by Mr, Clement Adams," Mr. Harrisse 

 admits that Eden had seen the map when he wrote, and that Eden was 

 personally acquainted with Cabot and published his work before Cabot's 

 death, and, again, Clement Adams issued the map in 1549, while Cabot 

 was alive and living in London. Here, then, is written evidence traced 

 back to Sebastian Cabot and reduced to writing in his lifetime. 



Again, it is misleading to vary the proposition slightly and say that 

 the date is only to be found in the legends on the planisphere of 1544, when 

 we know that later editions of this map existed, dated 1549, and that, while 



