Note 112 — Chapter I

America not discovered by Columbus, p. 164. Estancelin, in his Recherches sur les voyages et découvertes des navigateurs Normands en Afrique, dans les Indes orientales, et en Amérique; suivies d’observations sur la marine, le commerce, et les établissemens coloniaux des Français, Paris, 1832, claims that Pinzon, represented as a companion of Cousin, was one of the family later associated with Columbus in his voyage in 1492. Léon Guérin, in Navigateurs Français, 1846, mentions the voyage, but expresses no opinion. Parkman, Pioneers of France, p. 169, does not wholly discredit the story. Paul Gaffarel, Étude sur les rapports de l’Amérique et de l’ancien continent avant Colomb, Paris, 1869, and Découverte du Brésil par Jean Cousin, Paris, 1874, advocates the claim. Again, in his Histoire du Brésil Français, Paris, 1878, Gaffarel considers the voyage geographically and historically possible. (Cf. also a paper by him in the Revue politique et littéraire, 2 mai, 1874.) It is claimed that the white and bearded men whom, as Las Casas says, the natives of Hispaniola had seen before the coming of the Spaniards, were the companions of Cousin. Cf. Vitet’s Histoire de Dieppe, Paris, 1833, vol. ii.; David Asseline’s Antiquitéz et chroniques de Dieppe, avec introduction par Hardy, Guérillon, et Sauvage, Paris, 1874, two vols.; and the supplemental work of Michel Claude Guibert, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Dieppe, Paris, 1878, two vols. Cf. Sabin, vol. xii. no. 47,541; Dufossé, Americana, nos. 4,735, 9,027.