he should have sent Cartier and Roberval to settle and conquer the newer land? [Footnote:  The letters issued to Roberval have been recently published, for the first time, by M. Harrisse, from the archives of France, in his Notes pour servir a l’histoire de la Nouvelle France, p. 244, et seq. (Paris, 1872.) They are dated the 16th of February 1540.  Cartier’s commission for the same service is dated in October, 1540.  Charlevoix, misled probably by the letters granted by Henry iv to the Marquis de la Roche in 1598, in which the letters to Roberval are partially recited, asserts that Roberval is styled in them lord of Norumbega.  The letters now published show that he was in error; and that France limited the authority of Roberval to the countries west of the gulf of St. Lawrence (Canada and Ochelaga), so far as any are named or described, and made no reference to Norumbega as a title of Roberval or otherwise.  As the year commenced at Easter the date of Roberval’s commission was in fact after that of Cartier.]

With the failure of the expedition of Roberval, Francis abandoned the attempt to discover new countries, or plant colonies in America; but his successors, though much later, entered upon the colonization of New France.  They inherited his rights, and while they acknowledged the discoveries of Cartier they discredited those ascribed to Verrazzano.  Of the latter claim all of them must have known.  The publication of Ramusio took place during the reign of Henry II, who died in 1559; but he made no endeavor to plant colonies abroad.  In 1577 and 1578, the first commissions looking to possessions in America north of Florida, were issued by Henry III, to the Marquis de la Roche, authorizing settlement in the terres neufves and the adjacent countries newly discovered, in the occupancy of barbarians, but nothing was done under them.  In 1598, another grant was made to the same person by Henry iv, for the conquest of Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, the country of the river St. Lawrence, Norumbega, and other countries adjacent.  This is the first document emanating from the crown, containing any mention of any part of the continent north of latitude 33 degrees and south of Cape Breton.

Norumbega is the only country of those here enumerated which is included within those limits, and that did not become known through Verrazzano. [Footnote:  Norumbega embraced the region of country extending from the land of the Bretons to the Penobscot, of which it was regarded as the Indian name.  It was almost identical with what was subsequently called Acadia.  It had become known at an early period through the French fishermen and traders in peltries, who obtained the name from the Indians and carried it home to France.  It is described by Jean Alfonse, the chief pilot of Roberval, from an exploration which he made along the coast on the occasion of Roberval’s expedition to Canada, in 1542. (Hakluyt, III, 239-240.  Ms.