No allusion is made, in these letters of de la Roche, to any
previous exploration, although an enormous recital, already alluded
to, is made to a purpose of Francis I, in his commission to
Roberval, to conquer the countries here indicated. [Footnote:
Lescarbot (ed. 1609), 434. Harrisse, Notes de la Nouvelle France, p.
243.] De la Roche made a miserable attempt to settle the island of
Sable, a sand bank in the ocean, two degrees south of Cape Breton,
with convicts taken from jails of France, but being repelled by
storm and tempest, after leaving that island, from landing on the
main coast, returned to France without any further attempt to
colonize the country, and abandoning the poor malefactors on the
island to a terrible fate. [Footnote: The story is told by Lescarbot
(p. 38, ed. 1609), which he subsequently embellished with some
fabulous additions in relation to a visit to the island of Sable by
Baron de Leri, in 1519 (Ed. 1611, p. 22), even before the date of
the Verrazzano letter.] There is therefore no acknowledgment, in the
history of this enterprise, of the pretended discovery. The next act
of the regal prerogative was a grant to the Sieur de Monts, by the
same monarch in 1603, authorizing him to take possession of the
country, coasts and confines of La Cadie, extending from latitude 40
Degrees N. to 46 Degrees N., that is, Nova Scotia and New England,
the situation of which, it is alleged, De Monts understood from his
previous voyages to the country. [Footnote: Lescarbot (ed. 1609),
452-3. La Cadie, or Acadie, as it was for a long time afterwards
known, appears for the first time on any chart on the map of Terra
Nova, No. 56, in Gastaldi's Ptolemy, and is there called Lacadia.]
This document also is utterly silent as to any particular discovery
of the country; but it distinctly affirms that the foundation of the
claim to this territory was the report of the captains of vessels,