the First, who had become jealous of the enormous pretensions of Spain
and Portugal in the new world, and had on one occasion sent word to
{27} his great rival, Charles the Fifth, that he was not aware that
"our first father Adam had made the Spanish and Portuguese kings his
sole heirs to the earth." Verrazano's voyage is supposed on good
authority to have embraced the whole North American coast from Cape
Fear in North Carolina as far as the island of Cape Breton. About the
same time Spain sent an expedition to the northeastern coasts of
America under the direction of Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese pilot, and
it is probable that he also coasted from Florida to Cape Breton. Much
disappointment was felt that neither Verrazano nor Gomez had found a
passage through the straits which were then, and for a long time
afterwards, supposed to lie somewhere in the northern regions of
America and to lead to China and India. Francis was not able to send
Verrazano on another voyage, to take formal possession of the new
lands, as he was engaged in that conflict with Charles which led to his
defeat at the battle of Pavia and his being made subsequently a
prisoner. Spain appears to have attached no importance to the
discovery by Gomez, since it did not promise mines of gold and silver,
and happily for the cause of civilisation and progress, she continued
to confine herself to the countries of the South, though her fishermen
annually ventured, in common with those of other nations, to the banks
of Newfoundland. However, from the time of Verrazano we find on the
old maps the names of Francisca and Nova Gallia as a recognition of the
claim of France to important discoveries in North America. It is also
from the Florentine's voyage that we may date the {28} discovery of
that mysterious region called Norumbega, where the fancy of sailors and
adventurers eventually placed a noble city whose houses were raised on
pillars of crystal and silver, and decorated with precious stones.
These travellers' tales and sailors' yarns probably originated in the
current belief that somewhere in those new lands, just discovered,
there would be found an El Dorado. The same brilliant illusion that
led Ralegh to the South made credulous mariners believe in a Norumbega
in the forests of Acadia. The name clung for many years to a country
embraced within the present limits of New England, and sometimes
included Nova Scotia. Its rich capital was believed to ex