216 
CAPE COD. 
That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore 
of Labrador, gave the English no just title to New 
England, or to the United States generally, any more 
than to Patagonia. His careful biographer (Biddle) 
is not certain in what voyage he ran down the coast 
of the United States, as is reported, and no one tells 
us what he saw. Miller, in the New York Hist. 
Coll., Yol. I. p. 28, says he does not appear to have 
landed anywhere. Contrast with this Yerrazzani’s tar¬ 
rying fifteen days at one place on the New England 
coast, and making frequent excursions into the interior 
thence. It chances that the latter’s letter to Francis I., 
in 1524, contains “the earliest original account extant 
of the Atlantic coast of the United States ”; and even 
from that time the northern part of it began to be called 
La Terra Franceses or French Land. A part of it 
was called New Holland before it was called New Eng¬ 
land. The English were very backward to explore and 
settle the continent which they had stumbled upon. The 
French preceded them both in their attempts to colonize 
the continent of North America (Carolina and Florida, 
1562-4), and in their first permanent settlement (Port 
Poyal, 1605) ; and the right of possession, naturally 
enough, was the one which England mainly respected 
and recognized in the case of Spain, of Portugal, and 
also of France, from the time of Henry YII. 
The explorations of the French gave to the world the 
first valuable maps of these coasts. Denys of Honfleur 
made a map of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1506. No 
sooner had Cartier explored the St. Lawrence in 1535, 
than there began to be published by his countrymen re¬ 
markably accurate charts of that river as far up as Mon¬ 
treal. It is almost all of the continent north of Florida 
