Since the tempests which we encountered on the northern coasts, I have not written to your most Serene and Christian Majesty concerning the four ships sent out by your orders on the ocean to discover new lands, because I thought you must have been before apprized of all that had happened to us--that we had been compelled by the impetuous violence of the winds to put into Brittany in distress with only the two ships Normandy and Dolphin; [Footnote: The signification of Delfina, the name of the Verazzano ship of discovery, is differently given by the translators. Hakluyt renders it into English by the Word Dolphin and Dr. Cogswel here does the same. But this is not correct. The Italian for dolphin is delfino; which also signifies the dauphin, or oldest son of the King of France, so called because upon the cession of Dauphiny to the crown of France, he became entitled to wear the armorial device, which was a dolphin, of the princes of that province. Delfina is the feminine noun of Delfino, in that sense, that is the Dauphiness, M. Margry has so interpreted it in this case, and accordingly gives the vessel the name of Dauphine (Nav. Fran. 209), which as she is represented to have belonged to France, would have been her actual name.] and that after having repaired these ships, we made a cruise in them, well armed, along the coast of Spain, as your Majesty must have heard, and also of our new plan of continuing our begun voyage with the Dolphin alone; from this voyage being now returned, I proceed to give your Majesty an account of our discoveries,