"The French empire in the New World has vanished, leaving behind it ineffaceable monuments of the grand political conception of which it formed part."[239] Frenchmen were amongst the earliest to be roused by the discoveries of Columbus, Cabot, and Vasco da Gama; but it was not until the sixth year of the sixteenth century that any real attempt at discovery was made. In that year, 1506, Denys of Harfleur sailed across the Atlantic, hoping to reach the East, but finding instead the great Gulf of St Lawrence. He was not the only adventurer, for Aubert of Dieppe followed two years later and astonished his countrymen by bringing to France some natives of North America. Baron de Léry was the first to see the advantages of colonisation, and long before Sir Walter Raleigh was born the quick-witted Frenchman had planned within his fertile brain a new France beyond the sea. He attempted to carry out his purpose in 1518, but it was bound to fail, for the time was not yet ripe for a French colony, since France itself was still unsettled and imperfectly concentrated. Francis I., realising the advantages gained by his rival Charles V. from the rich mines of Peru, employed Verrazano, a Venetian, to "discover new lands by the ocean." He sailed in January 1524, and first reached that part of America now known as the Carolinas, and then coasted as far north as Newfoundland. "Sayling northeast for the space of 150 leagues," Verrazano writes, "we approached to the land that in times past was discovered by the Britons, which is in fiftie degrees. Having now spent all our provision and victuals, and having discovered about 700 leagues and more of new countries, and being furnished with water and wood, we concluded to return into France."[240] [Illustration: QUEBEC FROM POINT LEVY IN 1761 _From an engraving by R. Short._]