VERRAZANO OF FLORENCE.

39

quarrel when endeavoring to force baptism upon the natives of one of the islands.* His voyage had occupied five hundred and thirty-three days, while that of Columbus was less than one half that time, and he had actually circumnavigated the globe, for he had reached, by sailing westward, a point which he had in a former voyage passed in sailing to the eastward.

The next figure which appears on the scene is that of Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine corsair, employed by the French government. He is said to have become an expert navigator by sailing to the Indies, and to have captured one of the treasure-ships of Cortes, bearing a portion of the personal spoils taken from Montezuma, valued at a million and a half dollars. According to the somewhat confused and questionable statement of Verrazano, he sailed from the Madeira Islands January 17, 1524, and after a tempestuous voyage of fifty days, discovered land near Cape Fear, whence he coasted to the northward (discovering New York harbor and Narragansett Bay), and returned to France after an absence of six months, where he made a report to King Francis I., who thus derived a claim to much territory. The history of this man is of doubtful character, and much discussion has been brought out by letters and maps alleged to relate to them.†

*The discoverers who followed Columbus were as desirous as he to extend the Christian religion, and, in their zeal, they often deter mined to convert the heathen or to kill them in the attempt.

† See "Verrazano the Navigator," by J. C. Brevoort (1874), articles by the same in the "Magazine of American History," 1882, p. 481; “The Voyage of Verrazano," by H. C. Murphy (1875); and the collection of the New York Historical Society for 1841.

One of those who looked from the mountain-top with Balboa, over the Pacific, when he saw it for the first time, was a young Spaniard named Francisco Pizarro, a native of Truxillo, one of the most courageous, enterprising and hardy of the group. He heard of a rich country to the south, called Peru, and in

November, 1524, set out with a small ship, and eighty men, to conquer it. It was a remarkable enterprise, and it was carried out with unflinching perseverance in the face of difficulties almost insurmountable. After three years, Pizarro found himself again in Panama, with unbroken spirits, and he gave glowing accounts

FRANCISCO PIZARRO.

41

of the richness of Peru. With help from Cortes he was able to equip a force and to sail from Spain again, to renew the attempt under authority of Charles V. In 1534, he landed in Spain on his return, with a large sum of gold which he had wrenched from the native king, whom he had put to death after accepting the gold as ransom for his life. He afterwards returned to Peru with almost absolute power, and ruled the land until he was killed by disaffected conspirators, June 26th, 1541. His vision of the wealth of the country had been satisfied, but his natural passions. were too powerful for him to control, and he did not keep in peace that which he had obtained by unscrup ulousness and treachery.

Between 1527 and 1542, two Spanish adventurers, Cabeza de Vaca and Francisco Vasquez Coronado, had traversed the interior of the continent separately, discovering New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona, and visiting the Pueblo of Zuñi. Cabeza arrived at the Pacific Ocean at Sonora, and returned to Spain in 1537, and it was his stories that stirred De Soto to undertake his voyage the next year.

Sebastian Cabot was living during all these stirring times, and it was still many years before his death that Jacques Cartier was sent out from France-in 1534- to make explorations west of Newfoundland. He discovered the St. Lawrence River, and laid the foundation of the subsequent power of France in the Canadas. The advantage thus gained was followed. up for a few years, but the last half of the sixteenth century was barren of results for France, and Samuel Champlain, in 1603, became the real father of French settlements in that region.

This succession of enthusiastic adventurers and their marvellous discoveries must have been familiar to Sebastian Cabot, and it is difficult to put ourselves in the position of a man, who, year after year, listened to the story of the progress of discovery. The account reads, at our distance of time, like the records of the Knights of the Round Table, and we involuntarily elevate the actors to the lofty position occupied in romance by the searchers for the Sangrail.

So they unrolled the volume of the book,
And filled the fields of the Evangelist

With antique thoughts that breathed of Paradise!
Uprose they for the quest! The bounding men,

Of the siege perilous and the magic ring!

'Comrades in arms! Mates of the Table Round!
Fair sirs, my fellows in the bannered ring
Ours is a lofty tryst! This day we meet
Not under shield, with scarf and knightly gage,
To quench our thirst of love in ladies' eyes:
Nay, but a holier theme, a mightier quest -
Ho! for the Sangrail, vanished vase of God!'

There

CHAPTER III.

THE EARLY AMERICANS.

OR the discoverers of America the question, To what race the people whom they found on the continent belonged,

was answered in advance. India was the land they sought, India was the land they supposed they had found, and the inhabitants were for them Indians, and in spite of its confessed

impropriety, the name has been retained.

Few subjects are involved in more obscurity than the question, What is the origin of the native races of America? Did they come from Asia, or did the Asiatics go from the American continent? Dr. Latham had said that he knew no reasons valid to prove that the New World was not older than the Old, long before Agassiz had made his positive statement that the hypothesis was truth,* and it is now pretty generally accepted that at least a part of the Americans. *See the Atlantic Monthly, March 1863, p. 313.