The Voyage of the Verrazzano | Page 5

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.

II.
THE VERRAZZANO LETTER NOT GENUINE
No proof that the letter ascribed to Verrazzano, was written by him, has
ever been produced. The letter itself has never been exhibited, or
referred to in any authentic document, or mentioned by any
contemporary or later historian as being in existence, and although it
falls within the era, of modern history, not a single fact which it

professes to describe relating to the fitting out of the expedition, the
voyage, or the discovery, is corroborated by other testimony, whereby
its genuineness might even be inferred. The only evidence in regard to
it, relates to two copies, as they purport to be, both in the Italian
language, one of them coming to us printed and the other in manuscript,
but neither of them traceable to the alleged original. They are both of
them of uncertain date. The printed copy appears in the work of
Ramusio, first published in 1556; when Verrazzano and Francis I, the
parties to it, were both dead, and a generation of men had almost passed
away since the events which it announced had, according to its
authority, taken place, and probably no one connected with the
government of France at that time could have survived to gainsay, the
story, were it untrue.[Footnote: Verrazzano died in 1527; Louise, the
mother of Francis I in September, 1582, and Francis himself in March,
1547.] Ramusio does not state when or how he obtained what he
published. In the preface to the volume in which it is printed, dated
three years before, he merely speaks of the narrative incidentally, but in
a discourse preceding it, he obscurely alludes to the place where he
found it, remarking that it was the only letter of Verrazzano that he had
"been able to have, because the others had got astray in the troubles of
the unfortunate city of Florence." The origin of the manuscript version
is equally involved in mystery. It forms part of a codex which contains
also a copy of a letter purporting to have been written by Fernando
Carli, from Lyons to his father in Florence, on the 4th of August, 1524,
giving an account of the arrival of Verrazzano at Dieppe, and inclosing
a copy of his letter to the King. The epistles of Carli and Verrazzano
are thus connected together in the manuscript in fact, and by reference
in that of Carli, making the copy of the Verrazzano letter a part of
Carli's, and so to relate to the same date. But as the Carli letter in the
manuscript is itself only a copy, there is nothing to show when that was
really written; nor is it stated when the manuscript itself was made. All
that is positively known in regard to the latter is, that it was mentioned
in 1768, as being then in existence in the Strozzi library in Florence.
When it came into that collection does not appear, but as that library
was