The voyage of Verrazzano

by Henry Cruse Murphy

"In the voyage which we have made by order of your majesty, in addition to the 92 degrees we ran towards the west from our point of departure (the Desertas) before we reached land in the latitude of 34, we have to count 300 leagues which we ran northeastwardly, and 400 nearly east along the coast before we reached the 50TH PARALLEL OF NORTH LATITUDE, the point where we turned our course from the shore towards home. BEYOND THIS POINT THE PORTUGUESE HAD ALREADY SAILED AS FAR AS THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, WITHOUT COMING TO THE TERMINATION OF THE LAND."

That this latitude must be taken as correctly determined follows from the representation of the letter, that they took daily observations of the sun and made a record of them, so that no material error could have occurred and remained unrectified for over twenty-four hours; and from the presumption that they were as capable of calculating the latitude as other navigators of that period, sent on such purposes by royal authority, like Jacques Cartier, whose observations, as the accounts of his voyage to this region show, never varied half a degree from the true latitude. The fiftieth parallel strikes the easterly coast of Newfoundland three degrees north of Cape Race, and to that point the exploration of Verrazzano is therefore to be regarded as claimed to have been made. [Footnote: Damiam de Goes, Chronica do felicissimo rei Dom Emanuel parte I. C. 66. (Fol., Lisboa, 1566)]

This intention is made positively certain by the remark which follows the statement of the latitude, that "beyond this point the Portuguese had already sailed as far north as the Arctic circle without coming to the termination of the land." The exploration of the Portuguese here referred to, and as far as which that of Verrazzano is carried, was made by Gaspar Cortereal in his second voyage, when according to the letter of Pasqualigo the Venetian embassador, he sailed from Lisbon on a course between west and northwest, and struck a coast along which he ran from six to seven hundred miles, "without finding the end." [Footnote: Paesi novamente ritrovati. Lib. sexto. cap. CXXXL. Venice, 1521. A translation into English of Pasqualigo's letter, which is dated the 19th of October, 1501, is given in the memoir of Sebastian Cabot, p. 235-6.] No other exploration along this coast by the Portuguese, tending to the Arctic circle is known to have taken place before the publication of the Verrazzano letter. The first voyage of Cortereal, was, according to the description of the people given by Damiam de Goes, among the Esquimaux, whether on the one side or the other of Davis straits it is unnecessary here to inquire, as the Esquimaux are not found south of 50 Degrees N. latitude. The land along which he ran in his second voyage, was, according to the same historian, distinctly named after him and his brother, who shared his fate in a subsequent voyage. It is so called on several early printed maps on which it is represented as identical with Newfoundland. It appears first on a map of the world in the Ptolemy of 1511 edited by Bernardus Sylvanus of Eboli, and is there laid down as extending from latitude 50 Degrees N. to 60 Degrees N. with the name of Corte Real or Court Royal, latinized into Regalis Domus. [Footnote: Claudii Ptholemaei Alexandrini liber geographiae, cum tabulis et universali figura et cum additione locorum quae a recentioribus reporta sunt diligenti cura emendatus et impressus. (Fol., Venetiis, 1511.)] The length of the coast, corresponds with the description of Pasqualigo, and its position with the latitude assigned by the Verrazzano letter for their exploration. Its direction is north and south. There can be no question therefore as to the pretension of the Verrazzano letter to the discovery of the coast by him, actually as far north as the fiftieth parallel.

That it is utterly unfounded, so far as regards that portion of the coast lying east and north of Cape Breton, that is, from 46 Degrees N. latitude to 50 Degrees N., embracing a distance of five hundred miles according to actual measurement, or eight hundred miles according to the letter, is proven by the fact, that it had all been known and frequented by Portuguese and French fishermen, for a period of twenty years preceding the Verrazano voyage. The Portuguese fisheries in Newfoundland must have commenced shortly after the voyages of the brothers Cortereaes in 1501-2, as they appear to have been carried on in 1506, from a decree of the king of Portugal published at Leiria on the 14th of October in that year, directing his officers to collect tithes of fish which should be brought into his kingdom from Terra Nova; [Footnote: Memorias Economicas da academia Real das Sciencias da Lisboa, tom. III, 393.] and Portuguese charts belonging to that period, still extant, show both the Portuguese and French discoveries of this coast. On a map (No. 1, of the Munich atlas,) of Pedro Reinel, a Portuguese pilot, who entered the service of the king of Spain at the time of fitting out Magellan's famous expedition, Terra Nova, and the land of Cape Breton are correctly laid down, as regards latitude, though not by name. On Terra Nova the name of C. Raso, (preserved in the modern Cape Race) is applied to its southeasterly point, and other Portuguese names, several of which also still remain, designating different points along the easterly coast of Newfoundland, and a Portuguese banner, as an emblem of its discovery by that nation, are found. Another Portuguese chart, belonging to the period when the country between Florida and Terra Nova was unknown (No. 4 of the same atlas) delineates the land of Cape Breton, not then yet known to be an island, in correct relation with the Bacalaos, accompanied by a legend that it was discovered by the Bretons. [Footnote: Atlas zur entdeckingsgeschichte Amerikas. Herausgegeben von Friedrick Kunstmann, Karl von Sprusser, Georg M. Thomas. Zu den Monumenta Saecularia der K.B. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 28 Maers, 1859. Munchen.] The French authorities are more explicit. The particular parts of this coast discovered by the Normands and Bretons with the time of their discovery, and by the Portuguese, are described in the discourse of the French captain of Dieppe, which is found in the collection of Ramusio. This writer states that this land from Cape Breton to Cape Race was discovered by the Bretons and Normandy in 1504, and from Cape Race to Cape Bonavista, seventy leagues north, by the Portuguese, and from thence to the straits of Belle Isle by the Bretons and Normands; and that the country was visited in 1508 by a vessel from Dieppe, commanded by Thomas Aubert, who brought back to France some of the natives. This statement in regard to the Indians is confirmed by an account of them, which is given in a work, printed in Paris at the time, establishing the fact of the actual presence of the Normands in Newfoundland in that year, by contemporaneous testimony of undoubted authority. [Footnote: Eusebii Chronicon, continued by Joannes Multivallis of Louvain, (Paris 1512) fol. 172.

We give here, a translation of the interesting passage referred to in the text, from this volume, which came from the celebrated press of Henri Estienne.

"An Salutis, 1509. Seven savages were brought to Rouen with their garments and weapons from the island they call Terra Nova. They are of a dark complexion, have thick lips and wear marks on their faces extending along their jaws from the ear to the middle of the chin LIKE SMALL LIVID VEINS. Their hair is black and coarse like a horse's mane. They have no beard, during their lives, or hairs of puberty. Nor have they hair on any part of their persons, except the head and eye-brows. They wear a girdle on which is a small skin to cover their nakedness. They form their speech with their lips. No religion. THEIR BOAT IS OF BARK and a man may carry it with one hand on his shoulders. Their weapons are bows drawn with a string made of the intestines or sinews of animals, and arrows pointed with stone or fish-bone. Their food consists of roasted flesh, their drink is water. Bread, wine and the use of money they have none. They go about naked or dressed in the skins of bears, deer, seals and similar animals. Their country is in the parallel of the seventh climate, more under the west than France is above the west." PLUS SUB OCCIDENTE QUAM GALLICA REGIO SUPRA OCCIDENTEM. By "west" here is meant the meridional line, from which longitude was calculated at that time, through the Island of Ferro, the most westerly of the Canary islands, and the idea here intended to be conveyed is that the country of these Indians was further on this side than France was on the other side, of that line.

This description, as well as the name, Terra Nova, indicates the region of Newfoundland as the place from whence these Indians were taken. According to the tables of Pierre d'Ailly, the seventh climate commences at 47 Degrees 15' N. and extends to 50 Degrees 30' N. beginning where the longest day of the year is 15 hours and 45 minutes long. (IMAGO MUNDI, tables prefixed to the first chapter.) This embraces the greater part of the southerly and easterly coasts of Newfoundland. The practice of tattooing their faces in lines across the jaw, as here described, was common to all the tribes of this northern coast, the Nasquapecs of Labrador, the red Indians of Newfoundland and the Micmacs of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. It was from the use of red ochre for this purpose that the natives of Newfoundland obtained their designation of red Indians. The Micmacs used blue and other colors; hence it would appear from the circumstance of the marks upon these Indians being livid (LIVIDAE) or blue, like veins, that they belonged to the tribes of Cape Breton. (Hind's Labrador II, 97-110. Purchas, III. 1880-1. Denys. (HIST. NAT. DE L'AMERIQUE SEPT. II, 887.))]

That the French and especially the Normands had soon afterwards resorted to Newfoundland for the purpose of taking fish, and were actually so engaged there at the time of the Verrazzano voyage, is evident from the letter of John Rut, who commanded one of the ships sent out on a voyage of discovery by Henry VIII of England in 1527. That voyager states that, driven from the north by the ice, he arrived at St. Johns in Newfoundland on the third of August in that year, and found there eleven Normand, one Breton and two Portuguese vessels, "all a fishing." [Footnote: Purchas, III, 809. Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, pp. 108, 268, and the authorities there cited.] This was at a single point on the coast, and in latitude 47 Degrees 30' N.; and so large a number of vessels there denotes a growth of many years, at that time, of those fisheries.

These facts not only prove that Newfoundland and Cape Breton were well known in France and Portugal before the Verrazzano voyage and therefore that he did not discover them, but that he must have known of them before, and that the letter is intentionally false in that respect. It might perhaps be insisted with some plausibility under other circumstances, that he ran along the coast, believing that it was a new land, and therefore made the representation of having discovered it in good faith. But admitting that it was even possible for him to have sailed along those shores without encountering a single fishing craft which would have assured him that he was not in unknown waters, it is impossible that he could have sailed from Dieppe and returned to that port where, of all the places in France or Europe, the knowledge of these facts most existed, and where they were as familiar as household words, and where they must have entered into the thoughts and hopes of many of its inhabitants, without their being known to him; and that he could have written the letter from that same port, claiming the discovery of the country for himself, without intending a fraud. It was the port to which Aubert belonged and where he landed the Indians he brought from Newfoundland. It was the principal port of Normandy from which the fishing vessels made their annual voyages to that country. It was the port from whence he manned and equipped his own fleet of four ships, with crews which must have been largely composed of Normand sailors who were familiar with the navigation and the coast. And there was not a citizen of Dieppe, probably, who had not an interest of some nature in one or more of the fishing vessels, and could have told him what country it was that he had explored.

It bears unequivocal testimony to the fictitious character of this claim, that Ramusio thought it necessary to interpolate in his version a passage representing the discovery of Verrazzano as terminating where the discoveries of the Bretons began, and to omit the cosmography which states it was at the point where those of the Portuguese towards the Arctic circle commenced. By this alteration the letter is made to acknowledge the prior discoveries by the Bretons, which are entirely excluded in the original version, and to adopt the latitude of 50 Degrees N. for the Verrazzano limit thus making the false statement, as to the extent of the discovery, a mistake as it were of nautical observation. The following parallel passages in two versions will best explain the character and effect of the alteration.