I WROTE not to your Majesty (most Christian king), since the time we suffered the tempest in the north parts, of the success of the four ships which your Majesty sent forth to discover new lands by the ocean, thinking your Majesty had been already duly informed thereof. Now by these presents I will give your Majesty to understand how, by the violence of the winds, we were forced with the two ships, the “Norman” and the “Dolphin,” in such evil case as they were, to land in Brittany. Where after we had repaired them in all points as was needful, and armed them very well, we took our course along by the coast of Spain. Afterwards, with the “Dolphin” alone, we determined to make discovery of new countries, to prosecute the navigation we had already begun; which I purpose at this present to recount unto your Majesty, to make manifest the whole proceeding of the matter. The 17th of January, the year 1524, by the grace of God we departed from the dishabited rock,[73] by the Isle of Madeira, appertaining to the King of Portugal, with fifty men, with victuals, weapon, and other ship munition very well provided and furnished for eight months. And, sailing westwards with a fair easterly wind, in twenty-five days we ran five hundred leagues; and the 20th of February we were overtaken with as sharp and terrible a tempest as ever any sailors suffered: whereof, with the divine help and merciful assistance of Almighty God, and the goodness of our ship, accompanied with the good hap of her fortunate name, we were delivered, and with a prosperous wind followed our course west by north. And in other twenty-five days we made about four hundred leagues more, where we discovered a new land[74] never before seen of any man, either ancient or modern. And at the first sight it seemed somewhat low; but, being within a quarter of a league of it, we perceived, by the great fires that we saw by the seacoast, that it was inhabited, and saw that the land stretched to the southwards....