For a long time France was the chief rival with which Spain had to reckon. Verrazano, a Florentine sailor, was sent from France in command of four vessels to seek the longed-for westward route to Cathay. Left at last with one ship, he reached in 1524 the coast of North Carolina, “a new land never before seen of any man, ancient or modern,”--for in the opinion of the Europeans the natives counted not at all. Verrazano sailed along the coast, into the Bay of New York and out again, and along the coast of New England to Newfoundland. Provisions giving out, he returned to France and gave the first description of the coast of the United States. In the wake of Verrazano, followed other Frenchmen. One of these was Jacques Cartier. In 1534 he came to the coast of Newfoundland and sailed up the St. Lawrence River, hoping to find through it an outlet to Cathay. On a second voyage, he entered and named the Bay of St. Lawrence and ascended the great river as far as Montreal. A third voyage he made in 1541, for the purpose of establishing a colony. But a severe winter and much sickness and suffering discouraged the colonists, and the next year they left New France for Old. Years passed. Civil and religious wars laid France waste, and many earnest men began to look to the New World for an asylum from the Old. A band of French Protestants led by John Ribaut left their native shores to make their home in America. Instead of sailing northward, they landed in 1562 on the shores of Florida, which was the territory of Catholic Spain. The colony was attacked by the Spaniards under Menendez, and men, women, and children were killed. This terrible slaughter was avenged by the French under De Gourges, but the tide of French colonization was turned from the southern coast. Five years after this massacre, there was born Samuel de Champlain, who won the title of the “Father of New France.” His father was a French ship captain; he himself was trained in the art of navigation and became a captain in the royal navy. “Navigation is the art which has powerfully attracted me ever since my boyhood and has led me to expose myself almost all my life to the impetuous bufferings of the sea,” he said.