212 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



all Cabot's efforts to keep northerly, he actually (as we shall see) fell 

 souitherly some 750 miles before making land. 



. I have shown already clearly tbat Cabot started on his western 

 course from a point about 60° north latitude, somewhere to the west- 

 ward of the Feroë Islands. About 400 leagues west from Mm, was 

 the southernmost point of Greenland, Cape Farewell. In my " lecture " 

 on this subject I have given good reasons for believing that Cabot 

 was aware of the existence of this land, and that he determined to 

 '^ make " it, and rounding it, to steer westerly for Cathay. But even 

 if 'he were not aware of it he could scarcely help " making " it. In 

 proof of this I quoted the example of a practical navigator, the Hon. 

 Captain Cleary who, about fifty years ago (1853), made this very voy- 

 age. He left Copenhagen on October 13tih, bound for St. John's, 

 Newfoundland. Passing out between the Orkneys and Shetlands, 

 latitude exactly 60° N. 



" I tried all I could," he said, " to make southwar'dly during the 

 passage across, but I could not gain an inch that way. The first land 

 I saw was Cape Farewell, in Greenland. I was then carried south 

 and westward by the Arctic current and never saw land again till I 

 made Signal Hill, at the entrance of St. John's Harbour!" The 

 force of my argument depends so mnoh upon the fact of Cabot's having 

 made Cape Farewell, that I may be pardoned for briefly summarizing 

 here the remarks ma/de at length in my " lecture " already alludeid to. 

 We have now most authentic evidence of the discovery and colonization 

 of Greenland, Markland, Helluland and Vinland in the ninth century 

 by the Norsemen, and although these colonies completely failed, yet 

 the Norsemen of Iceland never altogether lost sight of them, and the 

 existence of a land to the westward of Iceland was well known to the 

 learned in Europe, at the time of the voyages of Columbus and Cabot. 

 From the records of the Vatican library, we find that an ecclesiastical 

 connection unbroken for four hundred years was kept up with Green- 

 land. And among the Vatican MSS. is a Brief or Bull of Pope 

 Alexander VI., dated 1492, the very year of Columbus's first voyage, 

 appointing a bishop of the See of Gardar, in Greenland. The exis- 

 tence then of this land was well known, though its exact position and 

 contour were not clearly understood (it scarcely is so yet). In some 

 early maps it is shown as a great peninsula jutting out from the north 

 of Europe, encircling Iceland and running down to latitude 60° in 

 the west of that island. In others, a little later, it is sihown as a part 

 of the mainland of America. At all events, its existence was well 

 known to the learned and nautical men of the age and we cannot doubt 

 that Cabot knew of it, and knew that he sihould have to pass it, going 

 westward. 



