discovered it in good faith. But admitting that it was even possible
for him to have sailed along those shores without encountering a
single fishing craft which would have assured him that he was not in
unknown waters, it is impossible that he could have sailed from
Dieppe and returned to that port where, of all the places in France
or Europe, the knowledge of these facts most existed, and where they
were as familiar as household words, and where they must have
entered into the thoughts and hopes of many of its inhabitants,
without their being known to him; and that he could have written the
letter from that same port, claiming the discovery of the country
for himself, without intending a fraud. It was the port to which
Aubert belonged and where he landed the Indians he brought from
Newfoundland. It was the principal port of Normandy from which the
fishing vessels made their annual voyages to that country. It was
the port from whence he manned and equipped his own fleet of four
ships, with crews which must have been largely composed of Normand
sailors who were familiar with the navigation and the coast. And
there was not a citizen of Dieppe, probably, who had not an interest
of some nature in one or more of the fishing vessels, and could have
told him what country it was that he had explored.

It bears unequivocal testimony to the fictitious character of this
claim, that Ramusio thought it necessary to interpolate in his
version a passage representing the discovery of Verrazzano as
terminating where the discoveries of the Bretons began, and to omit
the cosmography which states it was at the point where those of the
Portuguese towards the Arctic circle commenced. By this alteration
the letter is made to acknowledge the prior discoveries by the
Bretons, which are entirely excluded in the original version, and to
adopt the latitude of 50 Degrees N. for the Verrazzano limit thus