In the printed work, called Les voyages avantureux du Capitaine Jean Alphonse, Saintongeois, which was first published in 1559, after the death of Alfonse, it is expressly stated that the river of Norumbega, was discovered by the Portuguese and Spaniards.  Describing the great bank, he says that it runs from Labrador, “au nordest et suroest, une partie a oest-suroest, plus de huit cens lieues, et passe bien quatre vingts lieues de la terre neufue, et de la terre des Bretons trente ou quarante lieues.  Et d’icy va tout au long de la coste jusques a la riviere du Norembergue, qui est NOUVELLEMENT DESCOUVERTE par les PORTUGALOIS et ESPAGNOLS,” p. 53.  We quote from an edition of the work not mentioned by the bibliographers (Brunet-Harrisse), printed at Rouen in 1602.  This is almost a contemporary denial by a French author, whether Alfonse himself or a compiler, as it would rather appear, from his cosmography, of the Verrazzano discovery of this country.]

No allusion is made, in these letters of de la Roche, to any previous exploration, although an enormous recital, already alluded to, is made to a purpose of Francis I, in his commission to Roberval, to conquer the countries here indicated. [Footnote:  Lescarbot (ed. 1609), 434.  Harrisse, Notes de la Nouvelle France, p. 243.] De la Roche made a miserable attempt to settle the island of Sable, a sand bank in the ocean, two degrees south of Cape Breton, with convicts taken from jails of France, but being repelled by storm and tempest, after leaving that island, from landing on the main coast, returned to France without any further attempt to colonize the country, and abandoning the poor malefactors on the island to a terrible fate. [Footnote:  The story is told by Lescarbot (p. 38, ed. 1609), which he subsequently embellished with some fabulous additions in relation to a visit to the island of Sable by Baron de Leri, in 1519 (Ed. 1611, p. 22), even before the date of the Verrazzano letter.] There is therefore no acknowledgment, in the history of this enterprise, of the pretended discovery.  The next act of the regal prerogative was a grant to the Sieur de Monts, by the same monarch in 1603, authorizing him to take possession of the country, coasts and confines of La Cadie, extending from latitude 40 Degrees N. to 46 Degrees N., that is, Nova Scotia and New England, the situation of which, it is alleged, De Monts understood from his previous voyages to the country. [Footnote:  Lescarbot (ed. 1609), 452-3.  La Cadie, or Acadie, as it was for a long time afterwards known, appears for the first time on any chart on the map of Terra Nova, No. 56, in Gastaldi’s Ptolemy, and is there called Lacadia.] This document also is utterly silent as to any particular discovery of the country; but it distinctly affirms that the foundation of the claim to this territory was the report of the captains of vessels, pilots, merchants and others, who had for a long time frequented the country and