Imperial Rivalries.

The enormous wealth that the Spanish had extracted from their Central and South American colonies impressed the French and stirred them to action. After capturing several treasure-laden Spanish galleons during a war with Spain, the French king Francis I, with the support of silk merchants and other businessmen who were anxious to find the "Passage to the Orient," commissioned the Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 to explore the New World. Starting roughly at present-day Florida, Verrazzano sailed north and believed he saw the Pacific Ocean just behind the outer banks of what is today North Carolina. The find proved illusory, but the charts and maps he made of the east coast of North America provided a useful store of information for later French explorers.

St. Lawrence River.

Subsequent voyages to North America overturned Verrazzano's proposed route to Asia...