The Voyage of Verrazzano eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 213 pages of information about The Voyage of Verrazzano.

The Voyage of Verrazzano eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 213 pages of information about The Voyage of Verrazzano.

The fifth course and distance embrace fifteen leagues from the islands of C. de Muchas yllas, but the direction is not stated, and is left to be inferred from the fact which is stated that they proceeded on to another place where they entered a harbor, at the mouth of a large bay opening between north and east, of twelve leagues in width.  This course must therefore have been northerly and proceeded along the easterly shore of C. de Muchas yllas or Cape Cod.

The sixth runs easterly from the harbor on the C. de Muchas yllas, or Cape Cod, one hundred and fifty leagues easterly which include the opening of the great bay of twelve leagues and proceeds along the Arecifes or C. Sable on the coast of Nova Scotia to the Sarcales, probably Cape Canso at Chedabucto bay, where the coast TRENDED more northerly.

The seventh, from the Sarcales, fifty leagues more to the north, extends along the tierra de los Bretones or island of C. Breton to the cape of that name, passing the R. de la buelta, the easterly limit of the voyage of Gomez.  From this river easterly the map is compiled, as the names indicate, from Portuguese charts.

The eighth, from C. Breton fifty leagues between north and east, runs along the easterly coast of the tierra de los Bretones, to the supposed northerly shore of the bay between that land and the tierra de los Bacallaos or Newfoundland, but in reality the southerly entrance into the gulf of St. Lawrence,

The ninth from the termination of the last course, embraces one hundred and fifty leagues between north and east along the coast of the Bacallaos to C. Rasso or Cape Race and thence along the easterly coast of the Bacallaos to the Y. de Bacallaos In latitude 50 degrees N., the point of departure from the coast, and making the complement of 695 leagues, in all.

Such exact and unexceptional concurrence in the observation of distances for over two thousand miles, as this comparison exhibits, by two different navigators sailing at different times, under different circumstances of wind and weather, and under different plans of exploration, is impossible.  So far as regards the distances running north and south, such an agreement might happen, because the truth in that direction was ascertainable by any one, by means of observations of the latitude; but not as regards those running east and west; for these, no means of determining them existed, as before explained:  and accordingly on the Ribero map they are grossly incorrect.  From the Montana verde to the C. de Muchas yllas, that is, from the Hudson to the west end of the peninsula of Cape Cod, the distance appears to be eighty leagues, or nearly double its true length; while the width of the great bay between the C. de Muchas yllas and the Arecifes, or from Cape Cod to Cape Sable is shown to be less than twenty leagues, whereas it is more than fifty. 

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The Voyage of Verrazzano from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.