Francis himself, nor any of his successors, ever acknowledged or in
any manner recognized such discovery, or asserted under it any right
to the possession of the country; but, on the contrary, both he and
they ignored it, in undertaking colonization in that region by
virtue of other discoveries made under their authority, or with
their permission, by their subjects.

I. That no evidence of the Verrazzano discovery ever existed in
France, is not only necessarily presumed from the circumstance that
none has ever been produced, but is inferentially established by the
fact that all the French writers and historians, who have had
occasion to consider the subject, have derived their information in
regard to it from the Italian so-called copies of the letter, and
until recently from that in Ramusio alone. No allusion to the
discovery, by any of them, occurs until several years after the work
of Ramusio was published, when for the first time it is mentioned in
the account written by Ribault, in 1563, of his voyage to Florida
and attempted colonization at Port Royal in South Carolina, in the
previous year. Ribault speaks of it very briefly, in connection with
the discoveries of Sebastian Cabot and others, as having no
practical results, and states that he had derived his information in
regard to it, from what Verrazzano had written, thus clearly
referring to the letter. He adds that Verrazzano made another voyage
to America afterwards, "where at last he died." As Ramusio is the
only authority known for the latter statement, it is evident that
Ribault must have had his work before him, and consequently his
version of the letter, when he prepared this account. [Footnote: The
original narrative of Ribault, in French, has never appeared in
print. It was probably suppressed at the time for political reasons,
as the colony was intended for the benefit of the protestants of