The extrinsic evidence in support of the Verrazano discovery is next considered. As Mr. Murphy knew this evidence, it consisted of two pieces,—the Verrazano map, and the discourse of the great French sea-captain. The map was known, at the time of the printing of Mr. Murphy’s essay, only by description and by two inadequate photographs. Our present information about this map is so much greater, that Mr. Murphy’s account of it may be passed over until the map itself is described, later. The French captain’s discourse is known only in the Italian translation printed by Ramusio, and placed in his third volume, immediately after the Verrazano letter. Mr. Murphy dismisses this piece of evidence with few words. Finding in the discourse a clause relating to Verrazano, he at once concludes that Ramusio interpolated it, to make this document consistent with the letter. A skilled advocate, after proving to his own satisfaction the falsity of a document, likes to find some genuine story which may have served the concocters of the falsehood as a model and storehouse for their lies. He wants also to complete his case by showing the motive for the forgery. This motive Mr. Murphy finds in the civic pride of Florence. All the evidence in favor of the story is traceable, he says, to Florence. As for the model and source of the letter, he discovers these in an attempt “to appropriate to a Florentine the glory which belonged to Estévan Gomez, a Portuguese pilot ... in the service of the Emperor.” He gives the voyage of Gomez in pretty full details. The landfall occurred on the coast of South Carolina. Thence he ran the coast northwardly to Cape Breton, where he turned and retraced his track as far as Florida, returning to Spain by way of Cuba. Mr. Murphy brings forward the map of Ribero, made in 1529, which he claims as an official exhibition of the discoveries of Gomez, and which he thinks was used in the construction of the Verrazano letter, because the several courses and distances run, as described in the letter, agree with similar divisions on the map.[67]