ew; for in the
letters-patent of 1498 the expression "Londe and iles of late founde,"
and the wording of the award recorded in the King's privy-purse accounts,
August 10, 1497, "To hym that founde the new ile LI0," seem naturally to
suggest the island of Newfoundland of our day; and this impression
is strengthened by reading the old authors, who spell it, as Richard
Whitbourne in 1588, "New-found-land," in three words with connecting
hyphens, and often with the definite article, "The Newe-found-land." A
cursory reading of the whole literature of American discovery before
1831 would suggest that idea, and some writers of the present day still
maintain it. Authors of other nationalities have, however, always
disputed it, and have pushed the English discoveries far north to
Labrador, and even to Greenland. Champlain, who read and studied
everything relating to his profession, concedes to the English the coast
of Labrador north of 56 deg. and the regions about Davis Straits; and the
maps, which for a long period, with a few notable exceptions, were
made only by Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians, bear out Champlain's
remonstrances. It seems, moreover, on a cursory consideration of the
maps, probable that a vessel on a westerly course passing south of
Ireland should strike somewhere on the coast of Newfoundland about Cape
Bonavista, and, Cabot being an Italian, that very place suggests itself
by its name as his probable landfall. The English, who for the most part
have had their greatness thrust upon them by circumstances, neglected
Cabot's discoveries for fifty years, and during that time the French and
Portuguese took possession of the whole region and named all the coasts;
then, when the troubled reign of Henry VIII was over, the English people
began to wake up, and in fact rediscovered Cabot and his voyages. A
careful study, however, of the subject will be likely to lead to the
rejection of the Newfoundland landfall, plausible as it may at first
sight appear.

In the year 1831 Richard Biddle, a lawyer of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,
published a memoir of Sebastian Cabot which led the way to an almost
universal change of opinion. He advanced the theory that Labrador was the
Cabot landfall in 1497. His book is one of great research, and, though
confused in its arrangement, is written with much vigor and ability. But
Biddle lost the historian in the advocate. His book is a passionate brief
for Sebastian Cabot; for he strangely