explored all this coast, and PLACED HERE A NUMBER OF PEOPLE TO
CULTIVATE IT, who in the end were all killed and massacred by this
barbarous people" (fol. 1002 B.). This statement seems to justify
what the President De Thou, the contemporary of Thevet, says of him,
that he composed his books by putting "the uncertain for the
certain, and the false for the true, with an astonishing assurance."
(Hist. Univ., tom. II, 651, Loud., 1734.) Thevet had published before
this, in 1557, another book, called Les Singularites de la France
Antarctique, autrement nommee Amerique, in which he describes all
the countries of America as far north as Labrador, and says that he
ran up the coast to that region on his way home from Brazil, where
he went in 1555, with Villegagnon. In this earlier work he makes no
mention of Verrazzano; but does say that Jacques Cartier told him
that he (Cartier) had made the voyage to America twice (fol. 148-9).
It is thus evident that Thevet had not heard of Verrazzano in 1557,
or he would necessarily have mentioned him, as he had the subject
distinctly before him; and if he is to be believed in regard to his
intimacy with Cartier, with whom he says he spent five months at his
house in St. Malo (Cos. Univ., fol. 1014, B.), and from whom he
received much information, it is quite as clear that Cartier knew
nothing of the Verrazzano discovery, or he would have mentioned it
to Thevet.] It must, therefore, as regarded as confessed by them,
that no original authority for the discovery has never existed in
France.

If any voyage had taken place, such as this is alleged to have been,
it is morally impossible, in the state of learning and art at that
time in France, and with the interest which must necessarily have
attached to the discovery, that no notice should have been taken of
it in any of the chronicles or histories of the country, and that