Giovanni da Verrazano,a Florentine sailor in the service of France who had attracted the royal attention by his successful attacks on Spanish commerce, was commissioned by Francis I, in the spring of 1523, to cross the Atlantic in search for a sea route to Cathay. In April, the agents of Spain in France notified their government that Verrazano was ready to start. Two months later, the Spanish authorities learned that he had returned to La Rochelle, bringing the captured vessels in which Cortes had shipped the treasure gathered from the Aztec lords of Mexico. The proposed voyage of discovery was not, however, merely a blind for this attack on the Spanish West Indian fleet. Verrazano refitted his ships and made a second start, only to be driven back by a Biscayan storm. With his single remaining seaworthy vessel, he finally got away for the West. In March, 1524, land was sighted, probably near Cape Fear, on the Carolina coast. After looking in vain for a harbour toward the south, he turned northward and followed the shore line as far as Maine or Nova Scotia.Verrazano arrived in Dieppe before the eighth of July, the date of his report to the King. An Italian version of this letter was printed at Venice in 1556 by Ramusio, from whose “Navigationi” it was translated into English by Hakluyt, for his “Divers Voyages,” printed in 1582. A somewhat different contemporary manuscript copy, also in Italian, is preserved at Florence. This was printed by the New York Historical Society in 1841, with a translation which has been revised for the present volume.
Giovanni da Verrazano,a Florentine sailor in the service of France who had attracted the royal attention by his successful attacks on Spanish commerce, was commissioned by Francis I, in the spring of 1523, to cross the Atlantic in search for a sea route to Cathay. In April, the agents of Spain in France notified their government that Verrazano was ready to start. Two months later, the Spanish authorities learned that he had returned to La Rochelle, bringing the captured vessels in which Cortes had shipped the treasure gathered from the Aztec lords of Mexico. The proposed voyage of discovery was not, however, merely a blind for this attack on the Spanish West Indian fleet. Verrazano refitted his ships and made a second start, only to be driven back by a Biscayan storm. With his single remaining seaworthy vessel, he finally got away for the West. In March, 1524, land was sighted, probably near Cape Fear, on the Carolina coast. After looking in vain for a harbour toward the south, he turned northward and followed the shore line as far as Maine or Nova Scotia.
Verrazano arrived in Dieppe before the eighth of July, the date of his report to the King. An Italian version of this letter was printed at Venice in 1556 by Ramusio, from whose “Navigationi” it was translated into English by Hakluyt, for his “Divers Voyages,” printed in 1582. A somewhat different contemporary manuscript copy, also in Italian, is preserved at Florence. This was printed by the New York Historical Society in 1841, with a translation which has been revised for the present volume.