The voyage of Verrazzano : $b a chapter in the early history of maritime discovery in AmericaMurphy, Henry Cruse
History
The voyage of Verrazzano : $b a chapter in the early history of maritime discovery in America
Murphy, Henry Cruse
America -- Discovery and exploration -- French; Verrazzano, Giovanni da, 1485-1528
In general, the geography of the coast is very indefinitely
described. Of its latitudes, with the exception of the landfall and
termination of the exploration, which are fixed also by other means,
and are necessary to the ground work of the story, only a single one
is mentioned. The particular features of the coast are for the most
part unnoticed. Long distances, embracing from two hundred to six
hundred miles each, are passed over with little or no remark.
Islands, rivers, capes, bays, and other land or seamarks, by which
navigators usually describe their progress along an unknown coast,
are almost entirely unmentioned. For a distance of over two thousand
miles, adopting the narrowest limits possible assigned to the
discovery, only one island, one river, and one bay are attempted to
be described, and not a single cape or headland is referred to. No
name is given to any of them, or to any part of the coast, except
the one island which is named after the king's mother. It was the
uniform practice of the Catholic navigators of that early period,
among whom, according to the import of the letter, Verrazzano was
one, to designate the places discovered by them, by the names of the
saints whose feasts were observed on the days they were discovered,
or of the festivals of the church celebrated on those days; so that,
says Oviedo, it is possible to trace the course of any such explorer
along a new coast by means of the church calendar. This custom was
not peculiar to the countrymen of that historian. It was observed by
the Portuguese and also by the French, as the accounts of the
voyages of Jacques Cartier attest. But nothing of the kind appears
here. These omissions of the ordinary and accustomed practices of
voyagers are suspicious, and of themselves sufficient to destroy all
confidence in the narrative. But to proceed to what is actually
stated in regard to the coast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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