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 conceives the son to have been wronged by the ascription to John Cabot of any portion of the merit of the discovery of America.  Not only would he suppress the elder Cabot, but he covers the well-meaning Hakluyt with opprobrium and undermines his character by insinuations, much as a criminal lawyer might be supposed to do to an adverse witness in a jury trial.  Valuable as the work is, there is a singular heat pervading it, fatal to the true historic spirit.  Hakluyt is the pioneer of the literature of English discovery and adventure—­at once the recorder and inspirer of noble effort.  He is more than a translator; he spared no pains nor expense to obtain from the lips of seamen their own versions of their voyages, and, if discrepancies are met with in a collection so voluminous, it is not surprising and need not be ascribed to a set purpose; for Hakluyt’s sole object in life seems to have been to record all he knew or could ascertain of the maritime achievements of the age.