ers. Where Verrazano hopes to find gold, Ribero declares that there is none; and Verrazano's 41° 40′ is in Ribero 44° N. Lat." Mr. Murphy affirms that Verrazano and Ribero commit the same mistakes in estimating the distances from New York to Cape Cod and thence to Cape Sable; but the name of Cape Cod does not appear on either map, for the reason that it was not known till Gosnold's voyage in 1602. Murphy assumes that Cape Cod is Ribero's "Cabo de muchas islas," but this designation in Ribero agrees with the Rio de las Gamas, of Cespedes, and Murphy, in another place, identifies this with the Penobscot. Ribero must be right, according to Murphy, because he follows Estevão Gomez; but what is the authority of Gomez? The contemporary Spanish writers give only the briefest notices of him, and mention neither the northern nor the southern limit of his voyage, nor any gulfs or harbors or sounds that he discovered. Kohl says on this subject: "In respect to all the particulars of his voyage we are left to probabilities. Verrazano must have been aware, says Mr. Murphy, that when he reached 50° N. Lat. he was on a coast already known to the Bretons, for he himself had been there with Aubert in 1508. It cannot be said that he made a mistake as to the coast, for he came with his people from Dieppe, and must have recognized regions frequented by Norman and Breton and Portuguese fishermen. The answer is, in the first place, that Verrazano uses the word scoprire, as English seamen of the time used the word discover, in the sense of to sight, to * Kunstmann, Entdeckung Amerikas, München, 1859, s. 276. reach, and never in the sense of finding a previously unknown region. This latter meaning he expresses in a way not to be misunderstood: "(I saw) a region never seen before by any one, in ancient or in modern times."* As for the fishing ground, Dr. Lechner quotes from Ribero's map an inscription to this effect: "Lands of codfish there is there nothing of value but the fishery of the codfish, which are of little worth."+ Dr. Lechner's copy of the Ribero map does not agree with the facsimile, reproduced from the original in the Propaganda by W. Griggs, of London, in 1887. In this facsimile there is, in the portion of the New World north of the Gulf of Mexico, but one inscription that resembles Dr. Lechner's quotation and this one reads: "New Land of Corte Real, in which there is nothing of value other than fishery of codfish and much pine timber."+ Mr. Murphy has made it a reproach to Verrazano's memory that he was hanged as a pirate; but a name is often a matter of convention. Many famous Englishmen would have met the fate of Verrazano if they had fallen into the hands of the Spanish king. If Verrazano was not only a pirate but an impostor, it must be allowed that he was a very ingenious impostor, for he succeeded in deceiving, not only Frenchmen and Italians, but also the Englishman Hakluyt ; and he did even more. He was able to smuggle into the Portuguese archives a dispatch of the Portuguese Envoy *Aver veduto una regione non mai stata veduta da alcuno nè negli antichi nè nei moderni tempi. +Tierras de los bacallaos. . . non han alla cosa de proveccho mas de la pescaria de bacallaos, que son de poca estima. Tiera Nova: de Cortereal' enla qual no ay otro provecho que pescaria debacallaos y mucha madera de pinos. Silveira, and into the Parliament archives at Rouen the two documents of the year 1526, as well as to forge the contract with the Admiral Chabot and Jean Ango. Yet more he must have forged the recently discovered papers which show that Francis I. was expected at Lyons on the 4th of August, 1524, and that Charles V. issued an order for the execution of Verrazano himself. So great was his craft that, without having visited them, he knew that the Narragansett Indians lived under two kings, who were uncle and nephew, just as they did afterwards in the time of Roger Williams. Verrazano's voyage, says Dr. Lechner, in conclusion, is a piece of history as real as the work of Livingstone or of Stanley. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF MT. ST. ELIAS. The latest volume (No. XV.) of the Nouvelle Géographie Universelle treats of Northern America, that is to say, Greenland, the Polar Archipelago, Alaska, the Dominion of Canada and Newfoundland. These regions are but little known, and it will take time to accumulate exact information concerning any one of them. Every acquired fact must be registered as common property, and theories must be treated as theories, if any advance is to be made. In his account of the Mt. St. Elias region, in Alaska, M. Reclus does not seem always to have kept these points in view. Mt. Edgecumbe, for instance, which is spoken of on pp. 193-194 as an independent volcano, is a parasitic cone on the side of a much larger crater.* * See article on Some of the Geographical Features of South-eastern Alaska," by William Libbey, Jr., in Journal Am. Geog. Soc., Vol. XVIII. (1886), p. 284. |