ear of his voyage was to
France a year of disasters,--defeat in Italy, the loss of Milan, the
death of the heroic Bayard; and, while Verrazzano was writing his
narrative at Dieppe, the traitor Bourbon was invading Provence.
Preparation, too, was soon on foot for the expedition which, a few
months later, ended in the captivity of Francis on the field of Pavia.
Without a king, without an army, without money, convulsed within,
and threatened from without, France after that humiliation was in no
condition to renew her Transatlantic enterprise.

Henceforth few traces remain of the fortunes of Verrazzano. Ramusio
affirms, that, on another voyage, he was killed and eaten by savages,
in sight of his followers; and a late writer hazards the conjecture that
this voyage, if made at all, was made in the service of Henry the Eighth
of England. But a Spanish writer affirms that, in 1527, he was hanged
at Puerto del Pico as a pirate, and this assertion is fully confirmed by
authentic documents recently brought to light.

The fickle-minded King, always ardent at the outset of an enterprise and
always flagging before its close, divided, moreover, between the smiles
of his mistresses and the assaults of his enemies, might probably have
dismissed the New World from his thoughts. But among the favorites of
his youth was a high-spirited young noble, Philippe de BrionChabot, the
partner of his joustings and tennis-playing, his gaming and gallantries.
He still stood high in the royal favor, and, after the treacherous
escape of Francis from captivity, held the office of Admiral of France.
When the kingdom had rallied in some measure from its calamnities, he
conceived the purpose of following up the path which Verrazzano had
opened.

The ancient town of St. Malo--thrust out like a buttress into the
sea, strange and grim of aspect, breathing war front its walls and
battlements of ragged stone, a stronghold of privateers, the home of a
race whose intractable and defiant independence neither time nor change
has subdued--has been for centuries a nursery of hardy mariners. Among
the earliest and most eminent on its list stands the name of Jacques
Cartier. His portrait hangs in the town-hall of St. Malo,--bold, keen
features bespeaking a spirit not apt to quail before the wrath of man
or of the elements. In him Chabot found a fit agent of his design, if,
indeed, its suggestion is not due to the Breton navigator.

Sailing from St. Malo on the twen