The Voyage of the Verrazzano | Page 4

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