isite bibelots.
African ivory was finer, whiter and firmer than that of India, and when
thus used was almost as valuable as gold.

But within the last ten years the slave trade had grown more profitable
than anything else. A Portuguese captain would kidnap or purchase a few
score negroes, take them, chained and packed together like convicts, to
Lisbon or Seville and sell them for fat gold moidores and doubloons. The
Spanish conquistadores had not been ten years in the West Indies before
they found that Indian slavery did not work. The wild people, under the
terrible discipline of the mines and sugar plantations, died or killed
themselves. Planters of Hispaniola declared one negro slave worth a
dozen Indians.

"I do not wonder that the cacique Hatuey told the priest that he would
burn forever rather than go to a heaven where Spaniards lived," said
Jean Florin. "To roast a man is no way to change his religion."

"Some of our folk in Rochelle are of that way of thinking," agreed
Captain Parmentier dryly. "What say you to a western voyage?"

"Not Brazil? Cabral claims that for Portugal."

"No; the northern seas--the Baccalaos. Of course codfish are not ivory,
and it is rough service, but Aubert and some of the others think that
there may be a way to India. Sebastian Cabot tried for it and found only
icebergs, but Aubert says there is a gulf or strait somewhere south of
Cabot's course, that leads westward and has never been explored."

"I am tired of the Guinea trade," the youth repeated; "Cape Breton at
any rate is not Spanish."

"Not yet," said Jean Parmentier with emphasis.

Thus it came about that when Aubert, in 1508, poked the prow of his
little craft into open water to the west of the great island off which
men fished for cod, there stood beside him a young man who had been
learning navigation under his direction, and was now called Jean
Verassen. His real name was Giovanni Verrazzano, but nobody in Dieppe
knew who the Florentine Verazzani might be, and during his
apprenticeship there he had been known as Florin--the Florentine. In his
boyhood the magnificent Medici, the merchant princes, had ruled
Florence. After the fall of Constantinople he had seen the mastery of
the sea pass from Venice to Lisbon. When he left Florence he followed
the call of the sea-wind westward until now he had cast his lot with
the seafarers of northern France, the only bit of the Continent that was
outside the shadow of the mighty p