Verrazzano is certainly found at Rochelle on the 16th of June, 1523, two months after the despatch of Silveira was written, with his prizes captured on a different expedition from that mentioned by the ambassador. It is evident, therefore, that the project of a voyage of discovery to Cathay, if ever seriously entertained, had at that time been abandoned; as may also be inferred from the statement of Andrade, that Silveira, in the nine years he was at the court of France, succeeded only in embargoing the voyage of the Florentine, and accomplishing some minor matters.[Footnote: The document accompanying the letter of Davila in the archives, describes Juan Florin as of Dieppe, and thus fixes the seat of his operations in Normandy. See Appendix, (IV. 2.)] But the question of any such voyage of discovery having been made at the time claimed in the Verrazzano letter is effectually set at rest by the fact that Verrazzano was then actually engaged in a corsairial enterprise elsewhere. Peter Martyr, in an epistle written on the 3d of August 1524, less than a month after the alleged return of Verrazzano to Dieppe from his voyage of discovery, wrote from Valladolid that "a courier of the king of Portugal had arrived (with word) that Florin, the French pirate, had captured a ship of his king on her way from the Indies, with a cargo valued at one hundred and eighty thousand ducats." [Footnote: Epist. 800 (ed. 1670).] It is impossible for Verrazzano to have been on the coast of North America, or on his return from Newfoundland to France, and at the same time to have taken a ship on her way from the Indies to Portugal, coming as she must have done, by the Cape of Good Hope.