geographical features are so meagrely and untruthfully represented,
as to prove that he could not have been the writer. The same
apparent inconsistency exists as to the natural history of the
country. Some details are given in regard to the natives, which
correspond with their known characteristics, but others are
flagrantly false. The account is evidently the work of a person who,
with an imperfect outline of the coast, by another hand, before him,
undertook to describe its hydrographical character at a venture, so
far as he deemed it prudent to say anything on the subject; and to
give the natural history of the country, in the same way, founded on
other accounts of parts of the new world. The actual falsity of the
statements alluded to is, at all events, sufficient to justify the
rejection of the whole story. So far as they relate to the littoral,
they are now to be considered.

In general, the geography of the coast is very indefinitely
described. Of its latitudes, with the exception of the landfall and
termination of the exploration, which are fixed also by other means,
and are necessary to the ground work of the story, only a single one
is mentioned. The particular features of the coast are for the most
part unnoticed. Long distances, embracing from two hundred to six
hundred miles each, are passed over with little or no remark.
Islands, rivers, capes, bays, and other land or seamarks, by which
navigators usually describe their progress along an unknown coast,
are almost entirely unmentioned. For a distance of over two thousand
miles, adopting the narrowest limits possible assigned to the
discovery, only one island, one river, and one bay are attempted to
be described, and not a single cape or headland is referred to. No
name is given to any of them, or to any part of the coast, except
the one island which is named after the king's mother. It was the