Verrazzano.] The latter writer has accordingly been cited by subsequent authors as an original authority on the subject, among others by Bergeron, [Footnote:  Traiete des Navigations, p. 103, par. 15.] and the commissioners of the king of France, in the controversy with his Britannic majesty in relation to the limits of Acadia; [Footnote:  Memoires des Commissaires du Roi, &c., I, 29.] but, as this plagiarism proves, without reason.  Charlevoix, with a proper discrimination, refers directly to Ramusio as the sole source from whence the account of the discovery is derived, as do the French writers who have mentioned it since his time, except M. Margry, who, in his recent work on the subject of French voyages, quotes from the Carli version.  It is thus seen that no other authority is given by the French historians than one or other of the Italian versions. [Footnote:  Andre Thevet, who published a work with the title of Cosmographie Universelle, in two volumes, large folio, in rivalry apparently with Belleforest, and in the same year, 1575, is referred to sometimes as an authority on this subject.  Speaking of the cruel disposition of the people of Canada, he mentions in illustration of it, the fate at their hands of some colonists whom Verrazzano took to that country.  The fact is thus related by him in connection with this voyage, for which he gives no authority or indication of any.  “Jean Verazze, a Florentine, left Dieppe, the seventeenth of march, one thousand five hundred and twenty-four, by command of King Francis, and coasted the whole of Florida, as far as the thirty-fourth degree of latitude, and the three hundredth of longitude, and explored all this coast, and placed here A number of people to cultivate it, who in the end were all killed and massacred by this barbarous people” (fol. 1002 B.).  This statement seems to justify what the President De Thou, the contemporary of Thevet, says of him, that he composed his books by putting “the uncertain for the certain, and the false for the true, with an astonishing assurance.”  (Hist.  Univ., tom.  II, 651, Loud., 1734.) Thevet had published before this, in 1557, another book, called Les Singularites de la France Antarctique, autrement nommee Amerique, in which he describes all the countries of America as far north as Labrador, and says that he ran up the coast to that region on his way home from Brazil, where he went in 1555, with Villegagnon.  In this earlier work he makes no mention of Verrazzano; but does say that Jacques Cartier told him that he (Cartier) had made the voyage to America twice (fol. 148-9).  It is thus evident that Thevet had not heard of Verrazzano in 1557, or he would necessarily have mentioned him, as he had the subject distinctly before him; and if he is to be believed in regard to his intimacy with Cartier, with whom he says he spent five months at his house in St. Malo (Cos.  Univ., fol. 1014, B.), and from whom he received much information, it is quite as clear that Cartier knew nothing of the Verrazzano discovery, or he would have mentioned it to Thevet.] It must, therefore, as regarded as confessed by them, that no original authority for the discovery has never existed in France.