THE CABOTIAN DISCOVERY 297 



stuntl}' hugging the shore, until he shall be over against an island, by 

 him called Cipango, situated in the equinoctial region, where he thinks 

 all the spices of the world, and also the ]irecious stones, originate." 

 Hudson's straits presented to him a further opening to the Levant, and 

 by hugging the shore he may have thought to have come out into the 

 Levant, though ceitainly not in the equatorial regions. This was the 

 purpose of the voj'aging. To reach Cathay was his single object. He 

 saw no human beings on this voyage, only certain tokens which indicated 

 the presence of man, such as snares, a needle for making nets, and some 

 felled trees. He saw abundant fishes, so that the sea seemed covered with 

 them. It is said that at present the cod, which doubtless was the fish 

 seen by Cabot, has its regular scheduled time for going northward up 

 the coast, and that it is not due in northern Labrador until August 15, 

 or at least a week after Cabot's supposed return. If it could be proved 

 that the stockfish Cabot saw, observed, at the end of the 15th century, 

 the same times and seasons of the cod of the present day, it would serve 

 as a sound argument against the extreme northern landfall. •' They 

 say," continues Raimondo, " that it is a very good and temperate country, 

 and thej' think that brazil-wood and silks grow there." This bi-azil- 

 wood is a wood used for d_yeing, and was known by that name in com- 

 merce long before the discovery of Brazil, the country. We have s.een 

 what use the gaily-dressed Englishmen made of richly-dj'ed garments, 

 and the discovery of such a useful commodity would have meant much 

 to them. But the brazil-wood, the e^esalpinia of botanj-, is not known 

 north of the Tropic of Cancer, and there is no tree or shrub native to 

 Grreenland or Labrador, to Newfoundland or Cape Breton, which could 

 possibly be mistaken for any species of that tree. 



Pasqualigo reports that Cabot said the tides were slack, and did not 

 flow as they did in England or in Bristol. This statement affords a very 

 strong argument in favour of the Cape Breton landfall theory. The 

 probable rise of tide on June 24, 1497, at Cape Breton Island, was 4^ feet, 

 while it Avas G^ leet at Cape JRace, in Newfoundland, and 5 feet at Cape 

 Chudleigh. As the probable rise of tide at Bristol was 37 feet, increafsing 

 in the spring of the year to forty feet, the conditions of the rise of the 

 tide in the three sites in the new world would, in anj' one of them, 

 attract the attention of the Bristol sailors. It was the velocit}^ of the 

 flood in the Bristol channel, and its apparent slackness in the new world, 

 that occasioned Cabot's remark. In King Road, in the Bristol channel, 

 the flood stream reaches a velocity of five knots per hour. At Cape 

 Breton Island there is scared}' any tidal stream. In Gray strait, which 

 is the passage between Cape Chudleigh and Britton islands, the average 

 velocity of the tide reaches five knots per hour, as in the Bristol channel. 

 The force of this argument is weakened by our uncertainty as to whether 

 Cabot is speaking of his observation at the site of the landfall, oi- at some 

 points of his subsequent explorations. 



