The discovery of the greater portion of the Atlantic coast of North
America, embracing all of the United States north of Cape Roman in
South Carolina, and of the northern British provinces as far at
least as Cape Breton, by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine, in
the service of the king of France, has received until quite recently
the assent of all the geographers and historians who have taken
occasion to treat of the subject. This acknowledgment, for more than
three hundred years, which would seem to preclude all question in
regard to its authenticity at this late day, has, however, been due
more to the peculiar circumstances of its publication than to any
evidence of its truth. The only account of it which exists, is
contained in a letter purporting to have been written by the
discoverer himself, and is not corroborated by the testimony of any
other person, or sustained by any documentary proof. It was not
published to the world until it appeared for the first time in
Italy, the birth place of the navigator, more than thirty years
after the transactions to which it relates are alleged to have taken
place; and it has not, up to the present time, received any
confirmation in the history of France, whose sovereign, it is
asserted, sent forth the expedition, and to whose crown the right of
the discovery accordingly attached. Yet it is not difficult to
comprehend how the story, appealing to the patriotic sympathies of
Ramusio, was inconsiderately adopted by him, and inserted in his
famous collection of voyages, and thus receiving his sanction, was
not unwillingly accepted, upon his authority, by the French nation,
whose glory it advanced, without possibly its having any real
foundation. And as there never was any colonization or attempt at
possession of the country in consequence of the alleged discovery,
or any assertion of title under it, except in a single instance of a
comparatively modern date, and with no important hearing, it is no
less easy to understand, how thus adopted and promulgated by the
only countries interested in the question, the claim was admitted by
other nations without challenge or dispute, and has thus become
incorporated into modern history without investigation.
Although the claim has never been regarded of any practical
importance in the settlement of the country, it has nevertheless
possessed an historical and geographical interest in connection with
the origin and progress of maritime discovery on this continent. Our
own writers assuming its validity, without investigation, have been
content to trace, if possible, the route of Verrazzano and point out
the places he explored, seeking merely to reconcile the account with
the actual condition and situation of the country. Their
explanations, though sometimes plausible, are often contradictory,
and not unfrequently absurd. Led into an examination of its merits
with impressions in its favor, we have nevertheless been compelled
to adopt the conclusion of a late American writer, that it is
utterly fictitious. [Footnote: An Inquiry into the Authenticity of
Documents concerning a Discovery in North America claimed to have
been made by Verrazzano. Read before the New York Historical
Society, Tuesday, October 10, 1864. By Buckingham Smith. New York,
1864. pp. 31, and a map.] The grounds upon which our conviction
rests we propose now to state. Some documents will be introduced,
for the first time here brought to light, which will serve further
to elucidate the question, and show the career and ultimate fate of
Verrazzano.
The letter, in which the pretension is advanced, professes to be
addressed by Verrazzano to the king of France, at that time Francis
I, from Dieppe, in Normandy, the 8th of July (O. S.), 1534, on his
return to that port from a voyage, undertaken by order of the king,
for the purpose of finding new countries; and to give an account of
the discoveries which he had accordingly made. He first reminds his
majesty that, after starting with four ships, originally composing
the expedition, he was compelled by storms, encountered on the
northern coasts, to put into Brittany in distress, with the loss of
two of them; and that after repairing there the others, called the
Normanda and Delfina (Dauphine), be made a cruize with this FLEET OF
WAR, as they are styled, along the coast of Spain. He finally
proceeded on the voyage of discovery with the Dauphine alone,
setting sail from a desolate rock near the island of Madeira, on the
17th of January, 1524, with fifty men, and provisions for eight
months, besides the necessary munitions of war. This voyage,
therefore, is to be regarded, according to the representations here
made, to have been begun with the sailing of the four ships, from
Dieppe, in the preceding year they fell upon a "country never before
seen by any one either in ancient or modern times." [Footnote: Some
writers have regarded this introductory as referring to two voyages
or cruises, one with the four ships before the disaster, and the
other with the Dauphine afterwards. But it seems clear from their
being described as assailed by tempests in the north, which
compelled them to run into Brittany for safety, that they were not
far distant from Dieppe when the storms overtook them; and must have
been either on their way out or on their return to that port. If
they were on their return from a voyage to America, as Charlevoix
infers (Fastes Chronologiques 1523-4), or simply from a cruise, as
Mr. Brevoort supposes, they would, after making their repairs, have
proceeded home, to Dieppe, instead of making a second voyage. They
must, therefore, be regarded as on their way from Dieppe. The idea
of a voyage having been performed before the storms seems to be due
to alteration which Ramusio made in this portion of the letter, by
introducing the word "success," as of the four ships, Charlevoix
expressly refers to Ramusio as his authority and Mr. Brevoort makes
a paraphrase from the Carli and Ramusio versions combined. (Notes on
the Verrazzano Map in Journal of the Am. Geog. Society of New York,
vol. IV, pp. 172-3)] On leaving Madeira they pursued a westerly
course for eight hundred leagues and then, inclining a little to the
north, ran four hundred leagues more, when on the 7th of March
[Footnote: There is some ambiguity in the account, as to the time
when they first saw land. The letter reads as follows: "On the 17th
of last January we set sail from a desolate rock near the island of
Madeira, and sailing westward, in twenty-five days we ran eight
hundred leagues. On the 24th of February, we encountered as violent
a hurricane as any ship ever weathered. Pursuing our voyage toward
the west, a little northwardly, in twenty-four days more, have run
four hundred leagues, we reached a new country," &c. If the twenty-
four days be calculated from the 24th of February, the landfall
would have taken place on the 20th of March; but if reckoned from
the first twenty-five days run, it would have been on the 7th of
that month. Ramusio changes the distance first sailed from 800 to
500 leagues; the day when they encountered the storm from the 24th
to the 20th of February; and the twenty-four days last run to
twenty-five; making the landfall occur on the 17th or 10th of March
according to the mode of calculating the days last run. As it is
stated, afterwards, that they encountered a gale WHILE AT ANCHOR ON
THE COAST, EARLY in March, the 7th of that month must be taken as
the time of the landfall.] It seemed very low and stretched to the
south, in which direction they sailed along it for the purpose of
finding a harbor wherein their ship might ride in safety; but
DISCOVERING NONE in a distance of fifty leagues, they retraced their
course, and ran to the north with no better success. They therefore
drew in with the land and sent a boat ashore, and had their first
communication with the inhabitants, who regarded them with wonder.
These people are described as going naked, except around their
loins, and as being BLACK. The land, rising somewhat from the shore,
was covered with thick forests, which sent forth the sweetest
fragrance to a great distance. They supposed it adjoined the Orient,
and for that reason was not devoid of medicinal and aromatic drugs
and gold; and being IN LATITUDE 34 Degrees N., was possessed of a
pure, salubrious and healthy climate. They sailed thence westerly
for a short distance and then northerly, when at the end of fifty
leagues they arrived before a land of great forests, where they
landed and found luxuriant vines entwining the trees and producing
SWEET AND LUSCIOUS GRAPES OF WHICH THEY ATE, tasting not unlike
their own; and from whence they carried off a boy about eight years
old, for the purpose of taking him to France. Coasting thence
northeasterly for one hundred leagues, SAILING ONLY IN THE DAY TIME
AND NOT MAKING ANY HARBOR in the whole of that distance, they came
to a pleasant situation among steep hills, from whence a large river
ran into the sea. Leaving, in consequence of a rising storm, this
river, into which they had entered for a short distance with their
boat, and where they saw many of the natives in their CANOES, they
sailed directly EAST for eighty leagues, when they discovered an
island of triangular shape, about ten leagues from the main land,
EQUAL IN SIZE TO THE ISLAND OF RHODES. This island they named after
the mother of the king of France. WITHOUT LANDING UPON IT, they
proceeded to a harbor fifteen leagues beyond, at the entrance of a
large bay, TWELVE LEAGUES BROAD, where they came to anchor and
remained for fifteen days. They encountered here a people with whom
they formed a great friendship, different in appearance from the
natives whom they first saw,--these having a WHITE COMPLEXION. The
men were tall and well formed, and the women graceful and possessed
of pleasing manners. There were two kings among them, who were
attended in state by their gentlemen, and a queen who had her
waiting maids. This country was situated in latitude 41 Degrees 40'
N, in the parallel of Rome; and was very fertile and abounded with
game. They left it on the 6th of May, and sailed one hundred and
fifty leagues, CONSTANTLY IN SIGHT OF THE LAND which stretched to
the east. In this long distance THEY MADE NO LANDING, but proceeded
fifty leagues further along the land, which inclined more to the
north, when they went ashore and found a people exceedingly
barbarous and hostile. Leaving them and continuing their course
northeasterly for fifty leagues FURTHER, they discovered within that
distance thirty-two islands. And finally, after having sailed
between east and north one hundred and fifty leagues MORE, they
reached the fiftieth degree of north latitude, where the Portuguese
had commenced their discoveries towards the Arctic circle; when
finding their provisions nearly exhausted, they took in wood and
water and returned to France, having coasted, it is stated, along an
UNKNOWN COUNTRY FOR SEVEN HUNDRED LEAGUES. In conclusion, it is
added, they had found it inhabited by a people without religion, but
easily to be persuaded, and imitating with fervor the acts of
Christian worship performed by the discoverers.
The description of the voyage is followed by what the writer calls a
cosmography, in which is shown the distance they had sailed from the
time they left the desert rocks at Madeira, and the probable size of
the new world as compared with the old, with the relative area of
land and water on the whole globe. There is nothing striking or
important in this supplement, except that it emphasizes and enforces
the statements of the former part of the letter in regard to the
landfall, fixes the exact point of their departure from the coast
for home again at 50 Degrees N. latitude, and gives seven hundred
leagues as the extent of the discovery. The length of a longitudinal
degree along the parallel of thirty-four, in which it is reiterated
they first made land, and between which and the parallel of thirty-
two they had sailed from the Desertas, is calculated and found to be
fifty-two miles, and the whole number of degrees which they had
traversed across the ocean between those parallels, being twelve
hundred leagues, or forty-eight hundred miles, is by simple division
made ninety-two. The object of this calculation is not apparent, and
strikes the reader as if it were a feeble imitation of the manner in
which Amerigo Vespucci illustrates his letters. A statement is made,
that they took the aim's altitude from day to day, and noted the
observations, together with the rise and fall of the tide, in a
little boat, which was "communicated to his majesty, in the hope of
promoting science." It is also mentioned that they had no lunar
eclipses, by means of which they could have ascertained the
longitude during the voyage. This fact is shown by the tables of
Regiomontanus, which had been published long before the alleged
voyage, and were open to the world. The statement of it here,
therefore, does not, as has been supposed, furnish any evidence in
support of the narrative, by redeem of its originality. Such is the
account, in brief; which the letter gives of the origin, nature and
extent of the alleged discovery; and as it assumes to be the
production of the navigator himself, and is the only source of
information on the subject, it suggests all the questions which
arise in this inquiry. These relate both to the genuineness of the
letter, and the truth of its statements; and accordingly bring under
consideration the circumstances under which that instrument was made
known and has received credit; the alleged promotion of the voyage
by the king of France; and the results claimed to have been
accomplished thereby. It will be made to appear upon this
examination, that the letter, according to the evidence upon which
its existence is predicated, could not have been written by
Verrazzano; that the instrumentality of the King of France, in any
such expedition of discovery as therein described, is unsupported by
the history of that country, and is inconsistent with the
acknowledged acts of Francis and his successors, and therefore
incredible; and that its description of the coast and some of the
physical characteristics of the people and of the country are
essentially false, and prove that the writer could not have made
them, from his own personal knowledge and experience, as pretended.
And, in conclusion, it will be shown that its apparent knowledge of
the direction and extent of the coast was derived from the
exploration of Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese pilot in the service of
the king of Spain, and that Verrazzano, at the time of his pretended
discovery, was actually engaged in a corsairial expedition, sailing
under the French flag, in a different part of the ocean.