Now, in all the Atlantic Ocean and its shores there is one region, and one only, which thus incloses a sheet of water having islands in its expanse, and this region lies in the very direction indicated on the old maps for Brazil. I allude to the projecting elbow of northeastern North America, which most nearly approaches Europe and has Cape Race for its apex. Its front is made up of Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. The remainder of the circuit is made up of what we now call southern Labrador, a portion of eastern Quebec province, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. This irregular ring of territory incloses the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, which has within it the Magdalens, Brion’s Island, and some smaller islets, not to include the relatively large Anticosti and Prince Edward. It has two rather narrow channels of communication with the ocean, which might readily fail to impress greatly an observer whose chief mental picture would be the great land-surrounded, island-dotted expanse of water. The surrounding land would itself almost certainly be regarded as insular, for there was a strong tendency to picture everything west of Europe in that way, even long after the time when most of these maps were made. Even when Cartier[103] in 1535 ascended the St. Lawrence River it was in the hope of coming out again on the open sea--a hope that implies the very conception of an insular mass inclosing the gulf, not differing essentially from the showing of the Catalan map of 1375. The number of the islands is immaterial. We may picture the Catalan map-maker dotting them in from vague report as impartially as the far better known Lake Corrib is besprinkled with islands in most of the old maps--far more plentifully than the facts give warrant.