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Updated: May 4, 2025
They claimed to be of Venice, but, according to one of their biographers, one Ramusio, "through the many worries and anxieties they had undergone, they were quite changed in aspect, and had got a certain indescribable smack of the Tartar both in air and accent, having, indeed, all but forgotten their Venetian tongue."
But falling in with land, he sailed northwards along the coast, to see if he could find any gulf that permitted him to proceed westwards in his intended voyage to India, and still found firm land to lat 56° N. Finding the coast here turning to the east, he despaired of finding a passage in that direction: he sailed again down the coast to the southwards, still looking everywhere for an inlet that would admit a passage by sea to India, and came to that part of the continent now called Florida; where, his victuals failing, he took his departure for England . In the preface to the third volume of his navigations, Ramusio, as quoted by Hakluyt, says that Sebastian Cabot sailed as far north in this voyage as 67° 30', where on the 11th June the sea was still quite open, and he was in full hope of getting in that way to Cathay, but a mutiny of his people forced him to return to England . Peter Martyr of Angleria, as likewise quoted by Hakluyt, says that Sebastian was forced to return to the southwards by the immense quantities of ice which he encountered in the northern part of his voyage .
Francesco Marcolini, a learned Italia, extracted the whole of the ensuing relation from the original letters of the two Zenos, Nicole and Antonio, which is published in the collection of Ramusio; and declares that Antonio laid down all the particulars of these voyages, and of the countries he and his brother had visited, on a map, which he brought with him to Venice, and which he hung up in his house as a sure pledge and incontestible proofs of the truth of his relations, and which still remained as an incontrovertible evidence in the time of Marcolini.
The former exposition is possible enough to one more concerned with the nearly enclosed Gulf of St. Lawrence and its islands than with its two comparatively narrow outlets; the second was afterward repeated approximately by Gastoldi's map illustrating Ramusio when he was somehow moved to minimize the width of the Gulf, though well remembering the straits of Belle Isle and Cabot.
Of the relation of this voyage by Alvarez, which Purchas published in an abbreviated form, from a translation out of the Italian in the collection of Ramusio, found among the papers of Hakluyt, Purchas gives the following character: "I esteem it true in those things which he saith he saw: In some others which he had by relation of enlarging travellers, or boasting Abassines, he may perhaps sometimes rather mendacia dicere, than mentiri."
In the text this river is named Senega, and its name probably signifies the river of the Azanhaji. It Is called in Ramusio Oro Tiber. The name of this place is explained as signifying a chest or bag of gold. There is a place marked in the Saharra, or great sandy desert; under the name of Tisheet, where there are salt mines, in lat. 17° 40' N. and long. 6° 40' W. which may possibly be Teggazza.
He says that Verrazzano "was sent by King Francis the First and Madame the Regent, his mother, into these new countries." In thus associating the queen mother with the king in the prosecution of the enterprise Laudoniere commits the same mistake as is made in the discourse in that respect. Isambert, Recueil, &c., tom. Hakluyt, III, p. 305. Ramusio, III, fol. 423.
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. Band II, 81. There is, therefore, nothing in the history or character of the publication in Ramusio or the manuscript, to show that the letter emanated from Verrazzano.
Clarke. In Ramusio these fish are called Orate vecchis, and in Grynaeus Ostreas veteres. Astl. This appears to indicate the gulf between Cape Emanuel, near the isle of Goree, and the Red Cape.
But that publication being at present inaccessible, we are under the necessity of being contented with the edition of Harris, in which he professes to have carefully collated the edition of Ramusio with most of the other translations, and with an original MS. in the royal library of Prussia.
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