Note 272 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN.

In reference to this passage, Mr. Francis Parkman writes: “I have searched my memory in vain for anything in the early French writers answering to Morton’s statement. I don’t think that Cartier, Champlain, Biard, Lescarbot or Le Jeune, the principal writers before 1635, make the extraordinary assertions in question. In fact, as there were no Spaniards in Canada, and likely to be none on French vessels going there, Indians of those parts would hardly have the opportunity of distinguishing between them by smell or otherwise. Indeed, they did not know the existence of such a nation.”