MARTYR-OVIEDO MAP, 1534.
North America, east coast.
Verrazano.
We come next to some further developments on the eastern coast of North America. A certain French corsair, known from his Florentine birth as Juan Florin, had become a terror by preying on the Spanish commerce in the Indies. In January, 1524, he was on his way, under the name of Verrazano, in the expedition which has given him fame, and has supplied not a little ground for contention, and even for total distrust of the voyage as a fact. He struck the coast of North Carolina, turned south, but, finding no harbor, retraced his course, and, making several landings farther north, finally entered, as it would seem from his description, the harbor of New York. The only point that he names is a triangular island which he saw as he went still farther to the east, and which has been supposed to be Block Island, or possibly Martha's Vineyard. At all events, the name Luisa which he gave to it after the mother of Francis I. clung to an island in this neighborhood in the maps for some time longer. So he went on, and, if his landings have been rightly identified, he touched at Newport, then at some place evidently near Portsmouth in New Hampshire, and then, skirting the islands of the Maine coast, he reached the country which he recognized as that where the Bretons had been. He now ended what he considered the exploration of seven hundred leagues of an unknown land, and bore away for France, reaching Dieppe in July, whence, on the 9th, he wrote the letter to the King which is the source of our information. Attempts have been made, especially by the late Henry C. Murphy, to prove this letter a forgery, but in the opinion of most scholars without success.
THE VERRAZANO MAP
AGNESE, 1536.