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Page 9
This statement must be false. Granting that such a letter, as is
ascribed to Verrazzano, had been written, it was impossible that
this obscure young man at Lyons, hundreds of miles from Dieppe,
Paris and Blois, away from the king and court and from Verrazzano,
not only at a great distance from them all, but at the point to
which the king was hastening, and had not reached, on his way to the
scene of war in the southern portion of his kingdom, could have come
into the possession of this document in less than a month after it
purports to have been written for the king in a port far in the
north, on the coast of Normandy. It obviously could not have been
delivered to him personally by Verrazzano, who had not been at
Lyons, nor could it have been transmitted to him by the navigator,
who had not yet presented himself before the king, and could have
had no authority to communicate it to any person. It was an official
report, addressed to the king, and intended for his eye alone, until
the monarch himself chose to make it public. It related to an
enterprise of the crown, and eminently concerned its interests and
prerogatives, in the magnitude and importance of the new countries;
and could not have been sent by Verrazzano, without permission, to a
private person, and especially a foreigner, without subjecting
himself to the charge of disloyalty, if not of treason, which there
is no other evidence to sustain. On the other hand it could not have
been delivered by the king to this Carli. It is not probable, even
if such a letter could have come into the hands of Francis, absent
from his capital in the midst of warlike preparations, engaged in
forming his army and en route for the scene of the invasion, that he
could have given it any consideration. But if he had received it and
considered its import, there was no official or other relation
between him and Carli, or any motive for him to send it forward in
advance of his coming to Lyons, to this young and obscure alien.
There was no possibility, therefore, of Carli obtaining possession
of a private copy of the letter through Verrazzano or the king.
The only way open to him, under the most favorable circumstances,
would have been through some publicity, by proclamation or printing,
by order of the king; in which case, it would have been given for
the benefit of all his subjects. It is impossible that it could have
been seen and copied by this young foreigner alone and in the city
of Lyons, and that no other copies would have been preserved in all
France. The idea of a publication is thus forbidden.
No alternative remains except to pronounce the whole story a
fabrication. The Carli letter is untrue. It did not inclose any
letter of Verrazzano of the character pretended. And as it is the
only authority for the existence of any such letter, that falls with
it.
III.
THE LETTER UNTRUE. I. NO VOYAGE OR DISCOVERY MADE FOR THE KING OF
FRANCE, AS IT STATES.
All the circumstances relating to the existence of the Verrazzano
letter thus prove that it was not the production of Verrazzano at
the time and place it purports to have been written by him. We pass
now to the question of its authenticity, embracing the consideration
of its own statements and the external evidence which exists upon
the subject.
The letter professes to give the origin and results of the voyage;
that is, the agency of the king of France in sending forth the
expedition, and the discoveries actually accomplished by it. In both
respects it is essentially untrue. It commences by declaring that
Verrazzano sailed under the orders and on behalf of the king of
France, for the purpose of finding new countries, and that the
account then presented was a description of the discoveries made in
pursuance of such instructions. That no such voyage of discoveries
were made for that monarch is clearly deducible from the history of
France. Neither the letter, nor any document, chronicle, memoir, or
history of any kind, public or private, printed or in manuscript,
belonging to that period, or the reign of Francis I, who then bore
the crown, mentioning or in any manner referring to it, or to the
voyage and discovery, has ever been found in France; and neither
Francis himself, nor any of his successors, ever acknowledged or in
any manner recognized such discovery, or asserted under it any right
to the possession of the country; but, on the contrary, both he and
they ignored it, in undertaking colonization in that region by
virtue of other discoveries made under their authority, or with
their permission, by their subjects.
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