It is a remarkable fact that in the proud list of the glories of noble France there is one class of achievements for which she has claimed more, and at the same time received less, honour than she really deserves. She has put forth a claim to having preceded even Prince Henry of Portugal in lifting the veil from the Sea of Darkness, the mysterious Atlantic, and in colonising the west coast of Africa; but although the most illustrious of her claimants to this distinction, the learned M. d'Avezac, still clings lovingly to his patriotic convictions on this head, the present writer has already demonstrated that that claim can by no means be maintained. At the same time France is very far from having received the amount of honour which is her due for the boldness of her maritime explorations at a somewhat later but still very early period. There can be no doubt that in the first half of the sixteenth century France was the nation which followed most boldly in the footsteps of Portugal, and it is possible that we have yet much to learn from unexamined manuscripts as to the exploits of the adventurous Dieppese at that interesting period in the history of navigation. The voyage treated of in the present volume holds an isolated and highly distinguished position midway as to date between the pretended and the real early achievements of the French nation at sea; for whereas the former were said to have taken place in the fourteenth, and the latter unquestionably did take place in the sixteenth, this voyage of De Bethencourt was made at the very commencement of the fifteenth century.