This was
important, and henceforth Portuguese ships joined with
the Normans, the Bretons, and the English in fishing on
the Grand Banks. Of the Corte-Reals nothing more was ever
heard.
The next great voyage of discovery was that of Juan
Verrazano, some twenty years after the loss of the
Corte-Reals. Like so many other pilots of his time,
Verrazano was an Italian. He had wandered much about the
world, had made his way to the East Indies by the new
route that the Portuguese had opened, and had also, so
it is said, been a member of a ship's company in one of
the fishing voyages to Newfoundland now made in every
season.
The name of Juan Verrazano has a peculiar significance
in Canadian history. In more ways than one he was the
forerunner of Jacques Cartier, 'the discoverer of Canada.'
Not only did he sail along the coast of Canada, but did
so in the service of the king of France, the first
representative of those rising ambitions which were
presently to result in the foundation of New France and
the colonial empire of the Bourbon monarchy. Francis I,
the French king, was a vigorous and ambitious prince.
His exploits and rivalries occupy the foreground of
European history in the earlier part of the sixteenth
century.
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