“After the past fortune on the northern coasts I did not write to your most serene and Christian majesty concerning the success of the four vessels ordered to the ocean to discover new lands, thinking that you would be informed of all: how, by the impetuous stress of the winds, we were compelled, with only the ships La Normandie and La Dauphine, in a damaged condition, to put back to Brittany, where they were mended. Your serene majesty has heard of the wandering course we made with these, armed as in war, along the shores of Spain, and afterward of the new purpose to pursue, with the Dauphine alone, the first voyage, from which having returned, I will give your serene majesty an account of what we discovered.[375] “From the desert-rock[376] in the sea, near the island of Madeira of the most serene king of Portugal, we departed with the said Dauphine, on the seventeenth of the past month of January, with fifty men, furnished with provisions, arms, and other martial instruments, and naval stores for eight months. Sailing westwardly, an easterly wind blowing pleasantly and moderately, we ran in twenty-five days 800 leagues.[377] On the fourteenth of February (_il di 14 Febbrajo_), we encountered a storm as severe as any one navigating ever experienced, from which we were enabled with divine help and goodness to escape, to the praise of the glorious and fortunate name of the ship, which endured the violent waves of the sea, and we pursued our voyage, continuing toward the west, holding a little to the north. In twenty-five more days (_in venti cinque altri giorni_), we ran 400 other leagues, when there appeared a new land, never before seen by men in ancient or modern times. “At first it seemed to be somewhat low. On approaching it within a quarter of a league, we saw by the large fires made on the shore that it was inhabited. We observed that the coast trended toward the south, and we inspected it to discover some harbor which we might enter with the ship to examine the nature of the land, but for fifty leagues along it we could not find a convenient haven where we could safely stay. Seeing the coast continued to run toward the south, we determined to turn and go back to the north, where we found the same want of harbors as we ascended the coast.” [Illustration: A copy of a part of the map of the fourth part of the world in the French work, “La Cosmographie Universelle,” by André Thevet, printed in Paris in 1575. (The original part is about one-third larger.)]