embraced the whole world; and consequently that the map was not a chart made by the navigator, showing his discoveries, but possibly the map of Hieronimo in its original form.  The construction of this old map, whoever was the author, is fixed certainly before 1529, by the statement of Hakluyt, that it was presented to Henry VIII by Verrazzano, the navigator, inasmuch as Verrazzano came to his death in 1527.  The Verrazzano map, in its present phase, not claiming to have been made before the year 1529, could not, therefore, have furnished the original representation of the western sea, or have been the one used by Lok.

Hakluyt adds to his statement that Verrazzano had been three times on the coast of America, which, if true, would disprove the discovery set up in the letter.  That document alleges that the coast explored by him was entirely unknown and had never before been seen by any one before that voyage, and consequently not by him; and that, as regards the residue of the coast north of 50 Degrees N., the Portuguese had sailed along it as far as the Arctic circle, without finding any termination to the land, thus giving the Portuguese as his authority for the continuity of the northern part of the coast, and excluding himself from it.  It is thus clearly stated in the letter, that he had not been there before.  It was impossible that he could have, consummated two voyages to America, and another to England, and made his court to the king, after 1524, and before his last and fatal cruize along the coast of Spain, as would have been necessary to have been done.  In asserting that Verrazzano made other voyages to America, Hakluyt is corroborated by the ancient manuscripts, to which the author of the memoirs of Dieppe refers, as mentioning that one Jean Verassen commanded a ship which accompanied that of Aubert to Newfoundland in 1508. [Footnote:  Desmarquets.  “Memoires chronologiques pour servir a l’histoire de Dieppe,” I. 100. (2 Vols.  Paris, 1785.) It is worthy of remark that this annalist seems to regard Verasseu and Verrazzano as different persons, which proves, at least, that his authority was independent of any matter connected with the Verrazzano claim.  That these names really relate, however, to the same individual, appears from the agreement with Chabot] It is possible, therefore, that Verrazzano made three voyages to Newfoundland, and was well acquainted with that portion of the coast, before hostilities broke out between Francis I. and the emperor, in 1522; at which time, as will be seen, he entered upon his course of privateering; and that during the time Francis was a prisoner at Madrid, in 1525-6, and the state of war accordingly suspended, and Verrazzano thrown out of employment, he visited England, and laid before the king a scheme of searching for the northwest passage; a project which Henry had been long meditating, as may be gathered from the proposition of Wolsey to Sebastian Cabot in 1519,