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Page 16
IV.
II. MISREPRESENTATIONS IN REGARD TO THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE COAST. THE
CHESAPEAKE. THE ISLAND OF LOUISE. MASSACHUSETTS BAY.
In pursuing its main object of making known the discovery, the
letter ventures upon certain statements which are utterly
inconsistent with an actual exploration of the country. The general
position and direction of the coast are given with sufficient
correctness to indicate the presence there of a navigator; but its
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
uniform practice of the Catholic navigators of that early period,
among whom, according to the import of the letter, Verrazzano was
one, to designate the places discovered by them, by the names of the
saints whose feasts were observed on the days they were discovered,
or of the festivals of the church celebrated on those days; so that,
says Oviedo, it is possible to trace the course of any such explorer
along a new coast by means of the church calendar. This custom was
not peculiar to the countrymen of that historian. It was observed by
the Portuguese and also by the French, as the accounts of the
voyages of Jacques Cartier attest. But nothing of the kind appears
here. These omissions of the ordinary and accustomed practices of
voyagers are suspicious, and of themselves sufficient to destroy all
confidence in the narrative. But to proceed to what is actually
stated in regard to the coast.
Taking the landfall to have occurred, as is distinctly claimed, at
latitude 34 Degrees, which is a few leagues north of Cape Fear in
North Carolina, and which is fixed with certainty, for the purposes
of the letter, at that point by the estimate of the distance they
ran northerly along the coast before it took an easterly direction,
the discovery must be regarded as having commenced somewhat south of
Cape Roman in South Carolina, being the point where the fifty
leagues terminated which they ran along the coast, in the first
instance, south of the landfall. It is declared that from thence,
for two hundred leagues, to the Hudson river, as it will appear,
there was not a single harbor in which the Dauphine could ride in
safety. [Footnote: A league, according to the Verrazzano letter,
consisted of four miles; and a degree, of 15,625 leagues or 62 1/3
miles.] The size of this craft is not mentioned, but it is said she
carried only fifty men, though manned as a corsair. Judging from the
size of the vessels used at that time on similar expeditions, she
was small. The two which composed the first expedition of Jacques
Cartier carried sixty men and were each of about sixty tons burden.
The Carli letter, which must be assumed to express the idea of the
writer on the subject, describes her as a caravel; which was a
vessel of light draught adapted to enter shallow rivers and harbors
and to double unknown capes where shoals might have formed, and was
therefore much used by the early navigators of the new world.
[Footnote: Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance. Tome Second. Marine, par
M. A. Jal. fol. V. (Paris 1849.)] Columbus chose two caravels, out
of the three vessels with which he made his first voyage; and the
third one, which was larger than either of the caravels, was less
than one hundred tons. The Dauphine is therefore to be considered,
from all the representations in regard to her, of less than the
latter capacity, and as specially adapted to the kind of service in
which she is alleged to have been engaged. In running north from
their extreme southerly limit, they must have passed the harbor of
Georgetown in South Carolina, and Beaufort in North Carolina, in
either of which the vessel could have entered; and in the latter,
carrying seventeen feet at low water and obtaining perfect shelter
from all winds. [Footnote: Blunt's American Coast Pilot, p. 359
(19th edition.)] But if they really had been unable to find either
of them, it is impossible that they should not have discovered the
Chesapeake, and entered it, under the alleged circumstances of their
search. That it may be seen what exactly is the statement of the
letter in regard to this portion of the coast, it is here given in
its own terms. Having represented the explorers as having reached a
point fifty leagues north of the landfall, which would have carried
them north of Hatteras, but still on the coast of North Carolina,
their movements over the next four hundred miles north are disposed
of in the following summary manner: "After having remained here,"
(that is, at or near Albemarle,) "three days riding at anchor on the
coast, as we could find no harbor, we determined to depart and coast
along the shore to the northeast, keeping sail on the vessel ONLY BY
DAY, and coming to anchor by night. After proceeding one hundred
leagues we found a VERY PLEASANT SITUATION AMONG SOME STEEP HILLS,
THROUGH WHICH A VERY LARGE RIVER, DEEP AT ITS MOUTH, FORCED ITS WAY
TO THE SEA." There can be no mistake in regard to the portion of the
coast here intended. Upon leaving this river they found that the
coast stretched, it is stated, as will presently appear, in an
EASTERLY direction. A stream coming from the hills, its situation at
the bend of the coast, its latitude as fixed by that of the port
which, after leaving it, they found in nearly the same parallel and
which is placed in 41 Degrees 40', all point distinctly to the
embouchure of the Hudson at the highlands of Navesink as the
termination of the hundred leagues. Within this distance the
Chesapeake empties into the sea.
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