TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 811 



visited Vinland. When we can discover Greenland's verdant mountains, we can 

 also hope to find the vineclad hills of Vinland the Good. 



The paper then drew attention to a remarkable fact which is new to historians, 

 that the eastern parts of British North America once formed part of the earliest 

 European Colony in the New World. Documents were quoted that have been 

 within the past year published by the Portuguese, which show that from a.d. 1500 

 to 1579, commissions were regularly issued to the Oorte Reals and their successors. 

 In 1580 Spain annexed Portugal. Last winter was spent by the writer in the 

 Azores, whence two expeditions sailed to colonise Cape Breton, a.d. 1521 and 

 1567, which probably made settlements at St. Peter's and Ingonishe. When 

 Spain became the owner of Terra Nova, she sent a colony thither, which the 

 writer traced to Spanish Harbour (Sydney) Cape Breton. He also showed that a 

 commission issued in 1521 to Fagundes, as governor of all the country between the 

 Spanish territories and the Land of the Corte Reals. The latter colony was 

 thirteen years earlier than any other in the New World, and the settlement in 1521 

 was the earliest in North America. It was nearly a century before the French 

 colonised Cape Breton. Cape Race (Cabo Raso ' bare cape '), the Bay of Funday 

 (Fonda ' deep '), and many other names are memorials of a lost colony which existed 

 for almost a century. History has been hitherto silent as to it. 



4. Note mir quelques bassins hydrographiques clu Dominion Oriental. 

 By the Rev. Abbe J. C. Laflamme, A.M. 



The author first rendered some account of his own explorations in the basin of 

 Lake St. John, and then spoke of the Mistassini Lake, only quite recently dis- 

 covered, in the interior of Labrador, and the superior of the Ontario in size. 



5. On Surveys of the Dominion Lands — North-Western Territories of 

 Canada. By Lindsay Russell. 



The principal topics treated in this paper were : — • 



1. The relevancy of these surveys to the objects of Section E, in that to them — 

 as they progress — is largely due the attainment of accurate knowledge of the details 

 of topography of an almost continental area. 



2. A notice of what the general cartography of these regions owes to indi- 

 vidual explorers and scientists who had previously traversed them — Sir Alexander 

 Mackenzie, Dease and Simpson Back, Franklin, Richardson — in general geography ; 

 later, in topographical and scientific surveys, to Sir J. H. Lefroy, Sir John Palliser, 

 Dr. Hector, and the Rev. Abbe" Pellitot in his mapping of his explorations in the 

 northern basin of the Mackenzie. 



3. A short exposition of the system in which Dominion lands are laid out into 

 townships, sections, and quarter-sections — the latter being the unit of individual 

 holdings — preceded by a brief explanation of the circumstances under which these 

 hitherto unsurveyed and almost unmapped regions came under the administration 

 of the Canadian Government, and the consequent necessity that arose for rapid 

 survey of vast areas into these subdivisional units for agricultural occupation. 



4. A technical description of processes of survey and of instruments used. The 

 difficulties encountered in securing — within restricting limits of reasonable ex- 

 penditure — adequate check upon unavoidable accumulation of error, in a system 

 which consists of a continual building or adding on of figures, the contours of 

 which are established by linear measurement under circumstances that unavoidably 

 entail but a very moderate approximation to accuracy. The following are the 

 checks adopted : — 



(a) Checks by astronomically-determined latitudes : number of latitude stations 

 so determined : instruments used. Comparatively unsatisfactory result of these as 

 checks on account of relatively large local deviations of the vertical met with. 

 Witness those recorded on the Survey of the International Boundary by the joint 

 U.S.A. and Imperial Commission. 



