the memory of it should not have been preserved in some of the
productions of its press. According to the letter itself, it was one
of the grandest achievements in the annals of discovery, and
promised the most important results to France. It was an enterprise
of her king, which had been successfully accomplished. There had
been discovered a heathen land, nearly three thousand miles in
extent, before unknown to the civilized world, and, therefore, open
to subjugation and settlement; healthy, populous, fertile and
apparently rich in gold and aromatics, and, therefore, an
acquisition as great and valuable as any discovery made by the
Spaniards or Portuguese, except that of Columbus. Silence and
indifference in regard to such an event were impossible. Printing
introduced long previously into the principal cities in France, had
early in this reign reached its highest state of perfection, as the
works issued from the presses of Henri Estienne and others attest.
In 1521 twenty-four persons practiced the art in Paris alone.
[Footnote: Didot in Harrisse Bib. Am. Vet., 189.] The discoveries in
the new world by other nations excited as much attention in France
as they did in the other countries of Europe. The letters of
Columbus and Vespucci, describing their voyages and the countries
they had found, were no sooner published abroad than they were
translated into French and printed in Paris. From 1515 to 1529
several editions of the Italian collection of voyages, known as the
Paesi novamente ritrovati, containing accounts of the discoveries of
Columbus, Cortereal, Cabral and Vespucci in America, and in 1532 the
Decades of Peter Martyr, were translated and published in Paris, in
the French language. Cartier's account of his voyage in 1535-6,
undertaken by order of Francis, in which he discovered Canada, was
printed in the same city in 1545, during the reign of that monarch.
These publications abundantly prove the interest which was taken in