A keen controversy has raged as to the exact landfall of John Cabot in
his 1497 voyage, and it cannot be said that a decisive conclusion has
followed. A long tradition (fondly repeated by Mr Justice Prowse)
finds the landfall in Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland. It is difficult to
say more than that it may have been so; it may too have been in Cape
Breton Island, or even some part of the coast of Labrador. In any
case, whether or not Cabot found his landfall in Newfoundland, he must
have sighted it in the course of his voyage. It may be mentioned here
by way of caution that the name Newfoundland was specialized in later
times so as to apply to the island alone, and that it was at first
used indifferently to describe all the territories discovered by
Cabot.

As no true citizen of Newfoundland will surrender the belief that Cape
Bonavista was in fact the landfall of Cabot, it seems proper to insert
in the story of the island, for what they are worth, the nearest
contemporary accounts of Cabot's voyage. They are more fully collected
in Mr Beazley's monograph,[10] to which I am indebted for the
translations which follow. The first account is contained, as has
already been pointed out, in a letter written by Raimondo di Raimondi
to the Duke of Milan:

"Most illustrious and excellent my Lord,--Perhaps among your
Excellency's many occupations, you may not be displeased to learn how
His Majesty here has won a part of Asia without a stroke of the sword.
There is in this kingdom a Venetian fellow, Master John Cabot by name,
of a fine mind, greatly skilled in navigation, who, seeing that those
most serene kings, first he of Portugal, and then the one of Spain,
have occupied unknown islands, determined to make a like acquisition