Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/63

Rh later wrecks are to be counted by the dozen, in different stages of sepulture and decay. It is probable, therefore, that these wrecks, which were used by the French convicts, can not have been there many years previously. The date, therefore, of this Spanish expedition to Cape Breton must have been between 1580 and 1598.

An inlet in Sydney Harbor is still known as the "Northwest Arm of Spanish River."

We have no account of the fate of this colony, but we may infer that it only existed for a short time. The French took possession of and colonized that country early in the seventeenth century, and their writers are silent as to the existence of any Spanish settlement there at that time.

So thoroughly forgotten is this lost colony of Terra Nova that, though there are many Portuguese names that survive on the map of Northeastern America, they no longer suggest their origin or meaning. Few persons imagine that the Bay of Fundy is the "Deep Bay," or Baya Fonda; or that Cape Race means the "Bare Cape" or Cabo raso. The "Land of the Corte Reals" knows them no more.

 

O purpose in the study of history is more instructive than that by which we trace the progress of freedom against authority, of inquiry as opposed to dogmatic assertion, of reason and right against arbitrary power.

As I shall have frequent need to speak of authority, it may be well to discriminate between its various species, and state with what specific meaning the term is to be used in this discourse. In the instruction of the young we all admit that authority must be the principal method employed. In early years many lessons were taught us chiefly on that principle—the rules of arithmetic, the relations of geometry, the formulas of logic, the rudiments of physics, with sundry theories as to the fluid nature of electricity and the atomic structure of matter. Besides these were lessons in history, which included the statement that Charles I was a martyr; and lastly the Church Catechism—all these did we diligently commit to memory and regard as truth. With the lapse of years came the perception that the lessons of childhood and youth were not all of equal validity. The mathematics and logic which appealed to the understanding remained, so did the largest part of physics; the hypothetic nature of electricity, however, and of the ultimate structure of matter, being deemed something else than 