the shores of Long Island, they came to an island, which may
have been Block Island, and thence to a harbor, which was probably that
of Newport. Here they stayed fifteen days, most courteously received by
the inhabitants. Among others appeared two chiefs, gorgeously arrayed
in painted deer-skins,--kings, as Verrazzano calls them, with attendant
gentlemen; while a party of squaws in a canoe, kept by their jealous
lords at a safe distance from the caravel, figure in the narrative
as the queen and her maids. The Indian wardrobe had been taxed to
its utmost to do the strangers honor,--copper bracelets, lynx-skins,
raccoon-skins, and faces bedaubed with gaudy colors.

Again they spread their sails, and on the fifth of May bade farewell to
the primitive hospitalities of Newport, steered along the rugged coasts
of New England, and surveyed, ill pleased, the surf-beaten rocks, the
pine-tree and the fir, the shadows and the gloom of mighty forests. Here
man and nature alike were savage and repellent. Perhaps some plundering
straggler from the fishing-banks, some manstealer like the Portuguese
Cortereal, or some kidnapper of children and ravisher of squaws like
themselves, had warned the denizens of the woods to beware of the
worshippers of Christ. Their only intercourse was in the way of trade.
From the brink of the rocks which overhung the sea the Indians would let
down a cord to the boat below, demand fish-hooks, knives, and steel, in
barter for their furs, and, their bargain made, salute the voyagers
with unseemly gestures of derision and scorn. The French once ventured
ashore; but a war-whoop and a shower of arrows sent them back to their
boats.

Verrazzano coasted the seaboard of Maine, and sailed northward as far as
Newfoundland, whence, provisions failing, he steered for France. He had
not found a passage to Cathay, but he had explored the American coast
from the thirty-fourth degree to the fiftieth, and at various points had
penetrated several leagues into the country. On the eighth of July, he
wrote from Dieppe to the King the earliest description known to exist of
the shores of the United States.

Great was the joy that hailed his arrival, and great were the hopes of
emolument and wealth from the new-found shores. The merchants of Lyons
were in a flush of expectation. For himself, he was earnest to return,
plant a colony, and bring the heathen tribes within the pale of the
Church. But the time was inauspicious. The y