CHAPTER I

PERIOD OF DISCOVERY

Exploration of Carolina Coast.-As this is the history of a single State, and not of the United States, it will not tell of the manner of the discovery of land in the Western Hemisphere by the "greatest of all sailors," Christopher Columbus. It is a remarkable fact that the first four great sailors that discovered land in America came from Italy-Co

Vespucci, John Cabot, and Verrazano. Notice will be taken first of Verrazano, because he gave the earliest description we have of the Carolina coast. It was in 1524, sailing under a French flag, that he saw this new country. His language is very sig

GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO

nificant, for it shows that he knew he was not on the coast of China or Japan, as Columbus supposed himself to be when he was among the West Indies. Another

passage in his remarkable letter makes it clear that he recognized the newly discovered land as a barrier between him and the ocean, beyond which lay Cathay. There is no doubt that he had heard of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe and that he believed there was in the northern hemisphere a passage corresponding to that which Magellan had found in the southern. To discover this was his fixed purpose.

He touched land about the thirty-fourth degree of north latitude, that is, on the coast of Carolina, and his description of the country is strikingly accurate. He says: "The whole shore is covered with fine sand about fifteen feet thick, rising in the form of little hills about fifteen paces broad. Ascending farther, we found several arms of the sea, which make in through inlets, washing the shores on both sides as the coast runs. An outstretched country appears at a little distance, rising somewhat above the sandy shore, in beautiful fields and broad plains, covered with immense forests of trees, more or less dense, too various in color and too delightful and charming in appearance to be described. They are adorned with palms, laurels, cypresses, and other varieties, unknown to Europe, that send forth the sweetest fragrance to a great distance". "How the seaworn mariners, tossed in a winter voyage on the stormy Atlantic, must have been ravished as they approached this balmy southern land in the springtime and scented the fragrance wafted far seaward!" says his biographer.