political anxieties, to busy itself with extensive nautical explorations. Had she so done, the whole of North America and Brazil might now have belonged to her. At the same time, however, we know that the Portuguese had establishments before 1529, in the East Indian Islands, and the existence of Portuguese names on the countries of which we speak, as thus delineated on these French maps, is in itself an acknowledgment of their discovery by the Portuguese, as assuredly the jealousy implied in the sentence quoted at p. vi of this introduction, from Pierre Crignon's Prologue, would not only have made the French most ready to lay claim to all they could in the shape of discovery, but would have prevented any gratuitous insertion of Portuguese names on such remote countries, had they themselves discovered them.
But, further, as an important part of the argument, the reader must not overlook that jealousy of the Portuguese, to which allusion has already been made (p. v), in forbidding the communication of all hydrographical information respecting their discoveries in these seas. As regards the surmises of M. Barbié du Bocage respecting the probable causes of the suppression or concealment of such documents, his carefulness and ingenuity entitle them to the best consideration; and if those documents really exist in France, or Rome, or elsewhere, it is much to be hoped that they may ere long be brought to light. His Excellency the Count de Lavradio, ambassador from Portugal to the Court of St, James's, has obligingly set
