258 THE OCEAN RIVER 



impressed by the exploit of the Florentine navigator and cap- 

 tain Verrazano, who resided at Dieppe. Verrazano made his 

 first great killing in the capture of Spanish treasure from 

 Mexico; he captured the returning fleet of Avila while in the 

 employ of the merchant Ango of Dieppe. As a result of this 

 exploit Verrazano was commissioned by the King in 1524 to 

 search the northern coasts of America for sources of new 

 treasure, at the same time keeping his eye open for a short cut 

 to the Indies. This was the first well-planned attempt to locate 

 the Northwest Passage. Men's minds were turning this way 

 because the reported hardship of Magellan's circumnavigation 

 of the world proved that there was no quick or feasible way by 

 the Patagonian Straits. Verrazano put on the map a mythical 

 sea called for many years by his name. As he sailed northward 

 by the Carolinas, the inland salt sounds of Pamlico and Albe- 

 marle, to say nothing of the Chesapeake a little to the north, 

 gave him the impression that here might be found a way into 

 the Pacific waters. So we have for a few decades the so-called 

 Sea of Verrazano. Beyond this the Florentine pushed into the 

 Hudson River and beyond to Narragansett Bay. Northward 

 from there he is said to have seen from his ship's deck the 

 peaks of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. But he 

 found no answers to the Northwest Passage or gold mines for 

 his king. The idea of the Sea of Verrazano, however, stuck in 

 men's minds for almost a century after this voyage, and was 

 so recorded on many maps. Verrazano returned to Dieppe a 

 hero, but his place in the sun was short. He went forth two 

 years later, once again a captain for the great merchant Ango 

 of Dieppe, on a voyage to the East Indies for spices. The Span- 

 ish, still burning under the insult of the capture of their treas- 

 ure fleet, waylaid this great pilot and hanged him for piracy. 

 Many of the great adventurers thus died violently — Gilbert, 

 Raleigh, Magellan, Roberval, Balboa, and others. 



By 1550 the coasts from the Caribbean to the Gulf of St. 



