If any voyage had taken place, such as this is alleged to have been, it is morally impossible, in the state of learning and art at that time in France, and with the interest which must necessarily have attached to the discovery, that no notice should have been taken of it in any of the chronicles or histories of the country, and that the memory of it should not have been preserved in some of the productions of its press.  According to the letter itself, it was one of the grandest achievements in the annals of discovery, and promised the most important results to France.  It was an enterprise of her king, which had been successfully accomplished.  There had been discovered a heathen land, nearly three thousand miles in extent, before unknown to the civilized world, and, therefore, open to subjugation and settlement; healthy, populous, fertile and apparently rich in gold and aromatics, and, therefore, an acquisition as great and valuable as any discovery made by the Spaniards or Portuguese, except that of Columbus.  Silence and indifference in regard to such an event were impossible.  Printing introduced long previously into the principal cities in France, had early in this reign reached its highest state of perfection, as the works issued from the presses of Henri Estienne and others attest.  In 1521 twenty-four persons practiced the art in Paris alone. [Footnote:  Didot in Harrisse Bib.  Am.  Vet., 189.] The discoveries in the new world by other nations excited as much attention in France as they did in the other countries of Europe.  The letters of Columbus and Vespucci, describing their voyages and the countries they had found, were no sooner published abroad than they were translated into French and printed in Paris.  From 1515 to 1529 several editions of the Italian collection of voyages, known as the Paesi novamente ritrovati, containing accounts of the discoveries of Columbus, Cortereal, Cabral and Vespucci in America, and in 1532 the Decades of Peter Martyr, were translated and published in Paris, in the French language.  Cartier’s account of his voyage in 1535-6, undertaken by order of Francis, in which he discovered Canada, was printed in the same city in 1545, during the reign of that monarch.  These publications abundantly prove the interest which was taken in France in the discoveries in the new world, and the disposition and efforts of the printers in the country at that time to supply the people with information on the subject; and also, that the policy of the crown allowed publicity to be given to its own maritime enterprises.  Of the enlightened interest on the part of the crown in the new discoveries, a memorable instance is recorded, having a direct and important bearing upon this question.  A few months only after the alleged return of Verrazzano, and at the darkest hour in the reign of Francis, when he was a captive of the emperor in Spain, Pigafetta, who had accompanied the expedition of Magellan and kept a journal of the voyage, presented himself at