_Winsor_, 1520, vol. 4, p. 434. The Pompey Stone and Spaniards in New York State, found in Oneida county with its Spanish inscriptions and date of 1520, and the names of places given in their corruption by the Dutch in a grant conveying part of Albany county. We can no longer hesitate to believe that the heathen reported by Danskon and other writers mentioned before had some foundation, and that the Spaniards knew and had explored the country on the Hudson long before the Dutch came, but had thought, as Peter Martys expresses it, after the failure of Estibon Comez and the Leconcrado d’Aillen “To the South, to the South for the great and exceeding riches of the Equator. They that seek gold must not go to the cold North.” The Spaniards never considered New Netherlands of any value itself. The Pompey Stone was located near where the Cardiff Giant was found and I do not build on it. That Giovanni de Verazzano, in the French ship “La Dauphin,” with a crew of fifty men, commissioned by Francis I, King of France, to make discoveries of new lands entered the lower and upper bays of what now is New York, and the mouth of the North, or now called the Hudson river, is conceded. He tried to ascend the river, thinking it the water route to the South sea or the Pacific ocean on the way to Cathay and the East Indies. A violent gale sprang up and compelled him to go to sea, and his discoveries along the coast of North America, from Florida to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, resulted in the French claiming that territory as La Nouvelle France (New France), an extent of more than 1,100 miles. The valuable furs and peltries of New France induced French merchants, ship owners and capitalists to send many vessels with merchandise to trade with the Indians. Some of these vessels sailed up the river (North or Hudson) to the height of its navigation, where the Mohawk enters into it. For protection and for a trading-house, the French built a fortified trading-house or castle in 1540, lying in the little bay on the west side of the river, called by the French the “Grande river,” near the site of Albany. Before the castle was completed the island was inundated by a great freshet. The earliest Europeans, coming to what is now New York, did not come intending to settle, but to gain in dealing in furs and peltry, and in that pursuit they became well acquainted with the topography of the country. On many of the maps of New France the Grande river is plainly represented from Sandy Hook to its navigable limits, about 175 miles.