The passage from one of Peter Martyr’s letters, which Mr. Murphy cites to prove that Verrazano was capturing a Portuguese vessel at the time when the letter claimed him as making discoveries, is not very conclusive. Mr. Major thinks that there was time for him to have run down from Dieppe, after his return to that port, to the coast of Portugal, attracted by so rich a game as one hundred and eighty thousand ducats. But Martyr’s statement is indefinite. There are no particulars of time or place, when or where the treasure was taken. It is not even certain that the news brought by the courier was more than a rumor. Martyr’s language is: “Ad aliud hac, iter fecit regis Portugalliæ cursor, quod Florinus pyrata Gallus nauim regi suo raptauerit ab Indis venientem, qua merces vehebãtur gemmarum et aromatum ad ducatorum centum octoginta millium summam conqueritur.”[89] The map of Hieronimo da Verrazano is without doubt the strongest support of the letter and voyage of his brother Giovanni. That these persons were brothers appears from a document dated May 11, 1526, whereby the navigator constitutes “Jarosme de Varasenne, son frère et heritier,” his attorney to act for him during a proposed voyage to the Indies. This paper, first printed by M. Harrisse in 1876, is signed “Janus Verrazanus.” Dr. De Costa gives a fac-simile of this signature,—here reproduced,—the only known autograph of Verrazano.[90] [Illustration] Mr. Brevoort gives perhaps the best description of the map, and I condense the following from his account of it. The map is on three sheets of parchment, pasted together, and is 260 centimetres long and 130 wide (about 102 inches by 51), its length being just double the width. It is well preserved, somewhat stained; but no part, except coast-names, is indistinct. Its projection is the simple cylindrical square one, in which all the degrees of latitude are made equal to each other and to the equatorial ones. Like other maps of its period, it has the equator drawn below the middle of the map, and shows 90° of latitude north, and 64° south of it. In breadth it represents about 320° of longitude. There is no graduation for longitude; but the meridians that cross the centres and sides of the two great circles of windroses appear to be drawn seventy degrees apart. There is the usual network of cross-lines radiating from windroses, with one great central rose in north latitude 16°. From the centre of each rose thirty-two lines are drawn to the points of the compass, and these lines are prolonged to the margin of the map. One meridian is divided into degrees of latitude of equal size, each one numbered. Close to the upper margin there is a small scale, with a legend explaining that from point to point there are twelve and a half leagues, each of four miles. The scale is equal to eighteen degrees of latitude in length, and is subdivided into six parts, each having four divisions or points. [Illustration: THE VERRAZANO MAP.