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Updated: June 17, 2025
If one belief prevailed more than another it was in the existence of a great sea, called on the maps "the sea of Verrazano," in what is now the upper basin of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes of the west, and which was only separated from the Atlantic by a narrow strip of land.
The letter of Carli, enclosing that of Verrazzano, is professedly written by a Florentine to his father in that city. The map of Hieronimo de Verrazano bears the impress of the family. The discourse of the French captain of Dieppe appears to have been sent originally to Florence, whence it was procured by Ramusio.
No doubt the French King thought that Cartier would find his way to the sea of Verrazano, beyond which were probably the lands visited by Marco Polo, that enterprising merchant of Venice, whose stories of adventure in India and China read like stories of the Arabian Nights. Jacques Cartier made three voyages to the continent of America between 1534 and 1542, and probably another in 1543.
Giovanni da Verrazano, a well-known corsair, in 1524, received a commission from that brilliant and dissipated king, Francis the First, who had become jealous of the enormous pretensions of Spain and Portugal in the new world, and had on one occasion sent word to his great rival, Charles the Fifth, that he was not aware that "our first father Adam had made the Spanish and Portuguese kings his sole heirs to the earth."
That it is utterly unfounded, so far as regards that portion of the coast lying east and north of Cape Breton, that is, from 46 Degrees N. latitude to 50 Degrees N., embracing a distance of five hundred miles according to actual measurement, or eight hundred miles according to the letter, is proven by the fact, that it had all been known and frequented by Portuguese and French fishermen, for a period of twenty years preceding the Verrazano voyage.
In regard to Verrazano admitting his report to be genuine the fact that he did pass through the Narrows into the Upper Bay is not open to dispute. He therefore must have seen as, a little later, Gomez may have seen the true mouth of Hudson's river eighty-five years before Hudson, by actual exploration of it, made himself its discoverer.
Mercator gives a legend in which he mentions that Verrazzano arrived on the coast on the 17th of March 1524, which is the day according to the version of Ramusio, following our mode of computation, as before explained. It is evident, therefore, that Mercator had the Ramusio version before him, and not the Verrazano map, as his authority on the subject.
On the distinctions which they make rests Hudson's claim to take practical precedence of Verrazano and of Gomez, who sailed in past Sandy Hook nearly a hundred years ahead of him; and of those shadowy nameless shipmen who in the intervening time, until his coming, may have made our harbor one of their stations for refitting and watering on their voyages from and to Portugal and Spain.
His delineation of the Atlantic coast, moreover, is according to the plan of Ribero, and he gives no indication of the western sea of the Verrazano map, but mentions in a legend the fresh water inland sea spoken of by Cartier, of the extent of which the Indians were ignorant.
Unfortunately, the Italian pilot who directed the voyage was killed in a skirmish with Indians during a temporary landing. Some have thought that this pilot who perished on the Mary of Guildford may have been the great navigator Verrazano, of whom we shall presently speak. The little vessel sailed down the coast to the islands of the West Indies.
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