Researches made in England, France, and Holland, at the instance of Massachusetts and New York,[7] have resulted in the recovery of many manuscript fragments more or less interesting, bearing upon the question of priority of discovery. Of these the following is not the least curious. If credence may be placed in the author of the "_Memoires pour servir à l'Histoire de Dieppe_," "_Recherches sur les Voyages et decouvertes des Navigateurs Normands_," and "_Navigateurs Français_," the continent of America was discovered by Captain Cousin in the year 1488. Sailing from Dieppe, he was carried westward by a gale, and drawn by currents to an unknown coast, where he saw the mouth of a large river. Cousin's first officer was "un étranger nommé Pinçon ou Pinzon," who instigated the men to mutiny, and was so turbulent that, on the return of the caravel, Cousin charged him before the magistrates of Dieppe with mutiny, insubordination, and violence. He was banished from the city, and embarked four years afterward, say the Dieppois, with Christopher Columbus, to whom he had given information of the New World.[8] In the "_Bibliothéque Royale_" of Paris there is, or rather was, existing a manuscript (dated in 1545) entitled "_Cosmographie de Jean Alfonce le Xaintongeois_." It is undoubtedly from this manuscript that Jean de Marnef and De St. Gelais compiled the "_Voyages Aventureux d'Alfonce Xaintongeois_," printed in 1559, which includes an expedition along the coast from Newfoundland southwardly to "une baye jusques par les 42 degrés, entre la Norembegue et la Fleuride," in 1543. Of Jean Alfonse it is known that he was one of Roberval's pilots, in his voyage of 1542 to Canada, and that he returned home with Cartier. Roberval expected to find a north-west passage, and Jean Alfonse, who searched the coast for it, believed the land he saw to the southward to be part of the continent of Asia. His cruise within the latitude of Massachusetts Bay is also mentioned by Hakluyt. The claim of Alfonse to be the discoverer of Massachusetts Bay has been set forth with due prominence.[9] Alfonse and Champlain were both from the same old province in the west of France. [Illustration: PIERRE DU GUAST, SIEUR DE MONTS.] It goes without dispute that the older French historians knew little or nothing of Hakluyt and Purchas. So little did the affairs of the New World engage their attention, that in the "History of France," by Father Daniel, printed at Amsterdam in 1720, by the Company of Jesuits, in six ponderous tomes, the discoveries and settlements in New France (Canada) occupy no more than a dozen lines. Cartier, Roberval, De Monts, and Champlain are mentioned, and that is all.