Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Navailles, Charles

NAVAILLES, Charles (nah-vi'-e), French pilot, b. in Dieppe about 1270; d. there about 1330. The French and some German authors name him as the discoverer of South America, where he is said to have landed in 1302, near the mouths of the Amazon. Alexander von Humboldt asserts that in the beginning of the 14th century there was a legend in Europe of a large continent far away in the Atlantic ocean where there was a gigantic river that had been discovered by a Dieppe pilot, and Ludovico Muratori, in discussing the origin of the report, claims that the custom-houses of Modena and Ferrara after 1306 exacted an enormous duty on dye-woods, known under the name of Brasilly, which came from a continent in the Atlantic ocean that had been discovered by a Dieppe pilot named Navailles. Antonio Capmany, in his history of the trade of the Catalonians, also narrates the discovery of Navailles, and asserts that he brought home some dye-woods that were formerly unknown in Europe, and that the Dieppe mariners for nearly a century had the monopoly of this trade, as they alone knew where to get them.