Ge APT Bek o£

The Unknown Isle

I T has been the fashion among historians of an older | generation to discuss at length the rival claims of French and English to prior discovery of Isle Saint Jean. In an age when such claims were important in determining ownership, there may have been some justification for detailed discussion; but the modern historian accepts the maxim that “‘prescription with- out possession availeth nothing,” and concerns him- self only with “effective occupation” of the lands in dispute.

Thanks to the scholarly articles of Dr. S. E. Daw- son, Dr. W. F. Ganong, and others of lesser note, one can dismiss with an easy mind the thought that Cabot ever entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence; but that English fishermen, from 1500 onwards, sailed through the Strait of Canso and explored the waters of the Gulf is highly probable. For personal reasons, and through fear of competition, their discoveries would be kept secret. Further, they were not of the class that received notice in high places, and conse- quently their knowledge has been buried with them, whether in the land of their fathers or among the mermaids at the bottom of the sea. _

The first white man, who landed on the shores of the future “Garden of the Gulf” and left a record of what he saw, was J acques Cartier, in his voyage of 1534. It is not unlikely that Cartier had learned the