Mr. Murphy argues, first, that the letter is not genuine, because no original has ever “been exhibited, or referred to in any contemporary or later historian as being in existence; and, although it falls within the era of modern history, not a single fact which it professes to describe relating to the fitting out of the expedition, the voyage, or the discovery, is corroborated by other testimony, whereby its genuineness might even be inferred.”[61] He considers it “highly improbable” that there could have been a French original of the letter, from which two translations were made, with an interval of twenty-seven years between them, “and yet no copy of it in French, or any memorial of its existence in that language, be known.”[62] As the Carli copy contains a Cosmographical Appendix not in the Ramusio text, Mr. Murphy assumes that Ramusio took his version from the Carli manuscript, revising it, and changing its language to suit his editorial taste. Later in his book he goes farther, and accuses Ramusio of suppressing a fact here and adding another there, to make the Verrazano narrative agree with other documents in his possession. As Carli’s letter to his father covered his copy of Verrazano’s letter, the inquiry is narrowed down to a question of the authenticity of the Carli letter. Mr. Murphy argues that this letter cannot be genuine, because it was written by an obscure person, at a great distance from the French Court, and from Dieppe (the port from which Verrazano wrote), only twenty-seven days after the date of the letter which it pretended to enclose. Mr. Murphy, in the next division of his argument, asserts that no such voyage was made for the King of France:— “Neither the letter, nor any document, chronicle, memoir, or history of any kind, public or private, printed or in manuscript, belonging to that period or the reign of Francis I., who then bore the crown, mentioning or in any manner referring to it, or to the voyage and discovery, has ever been found in France; and neither Francis himself, nor any of his successors, ever acknowledged or in any manner recognized such discovery, or asserted under it any right to the possession of the country; but, on the contrary, both he and they ignored it, in undertaking colonization in that region, by virtue of other discoveries made under their authority, or with their permission by their subjects.”[63]