224 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Battle harbour is not more than twenty miles north of Belle-isle island — 

 as near as possible in 52° 17', and far south of the supposed landfall. On 

 July 3 the harbour was again full of ice, and on the return of the vessel 

 on July 8, the cod had not struck in at the Strait of Belle-isle. It was 

 not until the steamer reached Blanc Sablon, inside the strait, that the 

 fish were met. The pilot charts record " an endless number of bergs " off 

 the coast in June ; and, in July, they report the strait was full of bergs. 

 I beg that it ma}' be carefully borne in mind that these statements are 

 not made on my authority. I have never seen any part of Labrador be- 

 yond the southern coast. They are the statements of men who have 

 sailed, and are sailing and working along the coast. It will not avail to 

 elaborate an ingenious hypothesis with " if," and " perhaps," and " possi- 

 h\j," and " it may be supposed," and " no man will doubt," that Cabot 

 might have slipped in through some opening in the ice, loosened by an 

 off-shore wind, and got into the inner water and coasted between the ice 

 and the shore ; any one who reads the testimony cited in this and my 

 previous paper.s — testimony of people not entangled in controversy, and 

 with noCabotian theories to support — will see that the physical conditions 

 of the coast of Northern Labrador are irreconcilable with the records of 

 the voyage of 1497. 



This, then, is the coast which some insist answers to the contem- 

 porary reports as fertile (fertile), as fruitful (fructiftere), as temperate 

 (temperata), as endowed with excellent soil (terra optima), and with 

 such a forest growth as suggests silk and bi*azil-wood. If it be necessary 

 that John Cabot should have found his landfall there in 1497 — if the 

 documents say so and it can be demonstrated — then let us say that^ by 

 some happy stroke of luck, he got through the field ice and touched the 

 shore, and that on his return he and the rest of his crew conspired to 

 make a false report, and that he dared to take an expedition there the- 

 next year to make a settlement. 



