THE
Discoveries of America
TO THE YEAR 1525
BY
ARTHUR JAMES WEISE, M.A.
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK: 27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET
LONDON: 25 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1884
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by
ARTHUR JAMES WEISE
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Press of
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York
THIS WORK IS DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR
TO
THE MEMORY OF
HIS DECEASED WIFE
CATHARINE V. UPDEGRAFF WEISE
It is a fact that America in the early ages was oneof the inhabited parts of the earth. The Egyptians,who were among the first of the peoples of the easternhemisphere to use letters and to write history, furnishthe earliest known account of the inhabitants ofthis continent. It is also a truth that some ancientgeographers and philosophers, who had no personalknowledge of the existence of a primitive people inthe western hemisphere, regarded the information recordedby the Egyptians as fictitious and incredible.When Columbus proposed to go to this inhabitedrealm beyond the western ocean almost all the learnedmen of Portugal and Spain opposed the undertaking asvisionary, and not a few of them asserted that the navigator’sopinions were absurd, because, as they argued,no one of all the seamen who had lived since the creationof the world had discovered land beyond Hibernia.
The discovery of the continent and the subsequentexplorations of the Spaniards not only confuted thefallacious arguments of the learned men of the middleages but confirmed the statements of the Egyptianrecords descriptive of the civilization of the Atlanticcountry. The tradition of the peopling of the continentby the descendants of Euenor, the good man begottenin the beginning from the ground, and of theresidence of celestial beings among the inhabitantspeculiarly confirms the account in the Bible of the[vi]creation of the first man from the dust of the groundand of his descendants having communications withangels.
The asserted discovery of America by the Northmenrests more upon conjecture than evidence. Itappears that Columbus was not the discoverer of thecontinent, for it was seen in 1497 not only by GiovanniCaboto but by the commander of the Spanish fleetwith whom Amerigo Vespucci first sailed to the NewWorld.
The land of Francesca, discovered by Verrazzano in1524, it will be seen, was early possessed by theFrench, who built a fort near the Indian village wherenow is the city of New York, and called the surroundingcountry La Terre d’Anormée Berge; a geographicaldesignation more significantly expressed in thephraseology, The Land of the Palisades.
The writing of this work required the personal examinationof many old and rare books, manuscripts,and maps, besides the perusal of a large number ofrecent papers and publications relating to its subject.The task further demanded a careful review and compari