Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
No never had Hudson seen a land of such enduring charm and measureless promise as this: and here, in this citadel of loneliness, which no white man's foot had ever trod, which, till then, only the eyes of the corsair Verrazano had seen, near a century before here was to arise, like Aladdin's Palace, the metropolis of the western world; enormous, roaring, hurrying, trafficking, grasping, swarming with its millions upon millions of striving, sleepless, dauntless, exulting, despairing, aspiring human souls; the home of unbridled luxury, of abysmal poverty, of gigantic industries, of insolent idleness, of genius, of learning, of happiness and of misery; of far-reaching enterprise, of political glory and shame, of science and art; here human life was to reach its intensest, most breathless, relentless and insatiable expression; here was to stand a city whose arms should reach westward over a continent, and eastward round the world; here were to thunder the streets and tower the buildings and reek the chimneys and arch the bridges and rumble the railways and throb the electric wires of American New York, the supreme product of Nineteenth Century civilization, radiant with the virtues and grimy with the failings that mankind has up to this time developed.
They wore skins about their loins and light feathers in their hair, and they were 'of colour russet, and not much unlike the Saracens. Verrazano said that these Indians were of 'cheerful and steady look, not strong of body, yet sharp-witted, nimble, and exceeding great runners. As he sailed northward he was struck with the wonderful vegetation of the American coast, the beautiful forest of pine and cypress and other trees, unknown to him, covered with tangled vines as prolific as the vines of Lombardy.
To one who wishes to carry away something of the solemn grandeur of the sea, its vast immensity, immeasurable energy and ageless haunting mystery we would say, "go to Newport." The authentic discovery of this harbor dates back to April, 1524, and to the French explorer, Verrazano, who anchored two weeks in the harbor and was visited by the Indians of the island.
The voyage of Verrazano, the Italian sailor who had been sent out by Francis I of France in 1524, and who had sailed along a great stretch of the Atlantic coast, was deemed by Frenchmen a sufficient title to the whole of North America. They flouted England's claim based upon the voyages of the Cabots nearly thirty years earlier.
I have quoted it in full partly because of the thrilling interest that it has for us; but more to show that the record of his explorations the "Half Moon's" log being written throughout with the same definiteness and accuracy gave what neither Gomez nor Verrazano gave: clear directions for finding with certainty the haven that he, and those earlier navigators, had found by chance.
The Corte-Reals, Verrazano, and Gomez had looked upon the endless panorama of the Atlantic coast of North America the glorious forests draped with tangled vines extending to the sanded beaches of the sea the wide inlets round the mouths of mighty rivers moving silent and mysterious from the heart of the unknown continent.
It was known that America lay as a vast continent, or island, as men often called it then, midway between Europe and the great empires of the East. Columbus, and after him Verrazano and others, had explored its eastern coast, finding everywhere a land of dense forests, peopled here and there with naked savages that fled at their approach.
The existence of the Verrazano map, much less its date, is obviously not proven by any of the maps or charts to which reference has here been made, and which are supposed to reflect some of its features, or indicate the verity of the Verrazzano discovery.
As respects North America beyond the Gulf of Mexico and the country to the North, dense ignorance still prevailed, and though a coast line had been followed from Florida to Cape Breton by Cabot, Gomez, and Verrazano, it was believed either to belong to a part of Asia or to be a mere prolongation of Greenland.
"The Emperor can carry on war against me only by means of the riches which he draws from the West Indies," cried Francis I when Verrazano brought home some treasure taken from Spanish ships in Western waters. And Francis Bacon expressed the belief of the age when he wrote that "money is the principal part of the greatness of Spain; for by that they maintain their veteran army.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking