2S8 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



coast and that the island of St. John was on the Atlantic seaboard and 

 that the Cape of Cape Breton was upon it. A passage in the Cosmo- 

 graphy of Jean Allefonsce (1545) exj)ressly mentions these places. He 

 says : — " Turning to the isle of St. John, called Cape Breton, the outmost 

 " part of which is in the ocean, in 45° from the Arctic pole, 1 say Cape of 

 " St. John called Cape Breton." That is surely precise enough. There 

 is no need to follow it further. He knew nothing about any other island 

 of St. John. Much more to the same etlect might be cited, but it cannot 

 be necessary further to prove what is so plain. 



Before closing it is proper to advert to a passage ^•■'' from the treatise 

 of Galvao (Galvano), cited in the presidential address. The archbishop 

 suggests that the discovery of the gulf by Cabot is indicated in it. He 

 gives the original Portuguese : " Descobindo toda a baya, rio, enseada, 

 " p'ra ver se passava da outra banda." He then says : "Hakluyt trans- 

 " lates it — discovering all the bay and river named Deseado to see if it 

 " passed on the other side." That is correctly quoted from the volume, but 

 the conclusion is not justified when all the facts are known. The arch- 

 bishop says that Hakluyt may have had reason to know that Enseada 

 was the name of a bay and river. '-Thus," he adds, "we have the name 

 " given by Cabot to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to our noble Canadian 

 " river, for no other bay or river could be possibly meant. A beautiful 

 " and appropriate name in sooth. It is the desired or desirable." The 

 meaning is correct of " Deseado," but not of Galvano's woi'd, which is 

 "enseada," for that is the Portuguese way of writing the Spanish 

 " ensenada," creek or inlet ; and the passage simply means in English, 

 **' searching every bay, river, and inlet, to see if it passed on the other 

 " side." Any argument founded on an evident mistranslation and substi- 

 tution of words must fall to the ground. We know from Oviedo where 

 the Rio de la Ensenada was, and it is put down on the great map of Alonso 

 de Santa Cruz (1542), far away from the place where he has indicated 

 the position of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. AVhile upon this point I 

 would observe that the presidential address seems to indicate a radical 

 misconception of this matter, because Hakluyt expressly saj's that the 

 translation he edited of Galvano was not his. In real truth he never had 

 the original. He tells us that it was a manuscript which had been in his 

 possession for twelve years — a translation made by " some honest and 

 " well affected merchant" whose name even he did not know. The 

 original work was published, after Galvano's death, in 1563, and we are 

 in a better position than Hakluyt to know what is in it, for a copy has 

 recently been found and published by the Hakluyt Society, in connection 

 with the translation Hakluyt acquired. Hakluyt says he annotated and 

 supplemented the manuscript in places, but as he had not a copy of the 

 original work he was unable to cori'ect the errors of translation which 

 evidently existed in it. There is no doubt about the meaning of enseada, 

 for elsewhere Galvano mentions a enseada de Biyala — the Bay of Bengal 

 — and elsewhere Galvano, in describing an island discovered by Columbus, 

 calls it Desejada. The translation says : " Deseada, that is, " the desired 

 or wished island." 1 need scarcely add that desejada is a ditfcrent word 

 from enseada, and no argument based on a substitution, even by Hakluyt's 

 well disposed merchant, of one for the other can ])Ossibly be valid. 



My argument is now closed, not from want of matter, but from 

 reluctance to occupy more space. The question is now placed before 

 those who will give the time and attention necessary to understand it. 



