Since the tempests which we encountered on the northern coasts, I have not written to your most Serene and Christian Majesty concerning the four ships sent out by your orders on the ocean to discover new lands, because I thought you must have been before apprized of all that had happened to us—­that we had been compelled by the impetuous violence of the winds to put into Brittany in distress with only the two ships Normandy and Dolphin; [Footnote:  The signification of Delfina, the name of the Verazzano ship of discovery, is differently given by the translators.  Hakluyt renders it into English by the Word Dolphin and Dr. Cogswel here does the same.  But this is not correct.  The Italian for dolphin is delfino; which also signifies the dauphin, or oldest son of the King of France, so called because upon the cession of Dauphiny to the crown of France, he became entitled to wear the armorial device, which was a dolphin, of the princes of that province.  Delfina is the feminine noun of Delfino, in that sense, that is the Dauphiness, M. Margry has so interpreted it in this case, and accordingly gives the vessel the name of Dauphine (Nav.  Fran. 209), which as she is represented to have belonged to France, would have been her actual name.] and that after having repaired these ships, we made a cruise in them, well armed, along the coast of Spain, as your Majesty must have heard, and also of our new plan of continuing our begun voyage with the Dolphin alone; from this voyage being now returned, I proceed to give your Majesty an account of our discoveries,

On the 17th of last January we set sail from a desolate rock near the island of Madeira, belonging to his most Serene Majesty the King of Portugal, with fifty men, having provisions sufficient for eight months, arms and other warlike munition and naval stores.  Sailing westward with a light and pleasant easterly breeze, in twenty-five days we ran eight hundred leagues.  On the 24th of February we encountered as violent a hurricane as any ship ever weathered, from which we escaped unhurt by the divine assistance and goodness, to the praise of the glorious and fortunate name of our good ship, that had been able to support the violent tossing of the waves.  Pursuing our voyage towards the west, a little northwardly, in twenty-four days more, having run four hundred leagues, we reached a new country, which had never before been seen by any one, either in ancient or modern times.  At first it appeared to be very low, but on approaching it to within a quarter of a league from the shore we perceived, by the great fires near the coast, that it was inhabited.  We perceived that it stretched to the south, and coasted along in that direction in search of some port, in which we might come to anchor, and examine into the nature of the country, but for fifty leagues we could find none in which we could lie securely.  Seeing the coast still stretched to the south, we resolved to change our course and stand to the north-ward, and as we still