The French once ventured
ashore; but a war-whoop and a shower of arrows sent them back to their
boats.
Verrazzano coasted the seaboard of Maine, and sailed northward as far as
Newfoundland, whence, provisions failing, he steered for France. He had
not found a passage to Cathay, but he had explored the American coast
from the thirty-fourth degree to the fiftieth, and at various points had
penetrated several leagues into the country. On the eighth of July, he
wrote from Dieppe to the King the earliest description known to exist of
the shores of the United States.
Great was the joy that hailed his arrival, and great were the hopes of
emolument and wealth from the new-found shores. The merchants of Lyons
were in a flush of expectation. For himself, he was earnest to return,
plant a colony, and bring the heathen tribes within the pale of the
Church. But the time was inauspicious. The year of his voyage was to
France a year of disasters,--defeat in Italy, the loss of Milan, the
death of the heroic Bayard; and, while Verrazzano was writing his
narrative at Dieppe, the traitor Bourbon was invading Provence.
Preparation, too, was soon on foot for the expedition which, a few
months later, ended in the captivity of Francis on the field of Pavia.
Without a king, without an army, without money, convulsed within, and
threatened from without, France after that humiliation was in no
condition to renew her Transatlantic enterprise.
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