For the next twenty years the Dutch plotting was the one in vogue. Visscher, in 1652, disjoined the two principal islands south of Cape Cod, and gave a better shape to that peninsula; but Crane Bay (Plymouth) continued to be more prominent than Boston. The French map of Sanson (1656) so far followed the Dutch as to recognize the claims of “Nouveau Pays Bas” to stretch through Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth Colony, as shown in the sketch in chap. xi. The old Dutch mistakes and the Dutch names characterize Hendrick Doncker’s Paskaert, in 1659, and other of the Hollanders’ sea-charts of this time. In 1660, François du Creux’s (Creuxius) Historia Canadensis converts into a Latin nomenclature, in a curious jumble, the names of the English, Dutch, and French. This map is given in fac-simile in Shea’s Mississippi, p. 50, and also in Vol. IV. of the present work. The next year (1661) Van Loon’s Pascaerte was based on Blaeu and De Laet, and his Zee-Atlas, though not recognized by Asher, represents the best knowledge of the time. There is a copy in Harvard College Library. There are other maps of Visscher of about this same time, in which Cape Cod becomes as excessively attenuated as it had been too large before.
NEW ENGLAND, 1680
This follows a manuscript French map preserved in the Depot des Cartes et Plans at Paris, as shown in a sketch by Mr. Poore in the Massachusetts Archives; Documents Collected in France, iii. 11.
Of the later Dutch charts or maps, the chief place must be given to that in Roggeveen’s Sea-Atlas, which is called in the English version The Burning Fen, and which still insists in calling the Cape Cod peninsula in 1675 a part of “Nieuw Holland,” as does one of Jannson’s of about the same date, in which Smith’s names survive marvellously when those of other towns had long taken their places. A map, La Nouvelle Belgique, covering also New England, and fashioned on one of Jannson’s, is annexed to an article, “Une Colonie Néerlandaise,” by Colonel H. Wauwermans, in the Bulletin de la Société Géographique d’Anvers, iv. 173. The Blaeu map, “Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova,” found in the Atlas of 1685, still preserves most of the older Dutch falsities; and that geographer made no one of these errors so conspicuous as he did in making still nearer than before the approach of “Lacus Irocociensis” to Narragansett Bay. A short dotted boundary-line is made to connect them, and he dispelled the old Dutch claim to southeastern New England, by putting “Nieu Engelland” east of this line, and “Nieu Nederlandt” west of it. This map was substantially followed in Allard’s Minor Atlas, of a few years later. A new English cartography sprang up when there came a demand for geographical knowledge, as the events of Philip’s War engaged general attention. The royal geographer Speed issued in 1676 a map of New England and New York in his Prospect; but he seems to have followed Visscher and the other Dutch authorities implicitly, as did Coronelli and Tillemon in the New England parts of their map of Canada issued in 1688. Stevens, in his Bibliotheca Geographica, p. 229, notes an English map of New England and New York, which he supposes to belong to 1690, “sold by T. Bassett, in Fleet Street,” which is seemingly enlarged from so early a Dutch map as De Laet’s of 1625. The text of Josselyn’s Voyages was used as the basis of A Description of New England, which accompanied in folio a folded plate, entitled “Mapp of New England, by John Seller, Hydrographer to the King.” It is without date, but is mentioned in the London Gazette in 1676, and could not have appeared earlier than 1674, when Josselyn’s book was printed. There is a copy in Harvard College Library; and it shows the coast from Casco Bay to New York, with a corresponding interior. These are precisely the bounds in the map which is given in Mather’s Magnalia in 1702, and which seems, in parts at least, to have been drawn from Seller’s. Sabin (Dictionary, vol. xiii. no. 52,629) gives A Description of New England in general, with a Description of the Town of Boston in particular, London, John Seller, 1682, 4º. Seller is also known to have issued a small sketch map in his New England Almanac, 1685 (copy in Harvard College Library); and still another, of which a fac-simile is given in Palfrey’s New England, iii. 489. There is a map (5 x 4½ inches) of New England by Robert Morden in R. Blome’s Present State of his Majesty’s Isles and Territories in America, 1687, p. 210, which is based on Seller’s, and which has been reproduced by the Bradford Club in their Papers concerning the Attack on Hatfield and Deerfield, New York, 1859. A different map, extending to New France and Greenland, is given in the Amsterdam editions of Blome, 1688 and 1715. Hubbard’s map, accompanying his Narrative of the Troubles in New England, 1677, a rude woodcut,—the first attempt at such work in the colony,—extends only to the Connecticut westerly; but northerly it goes far enough to take in the White Hills, which in the London reissue of the map are called “Wine Hills.” This is also given by Palfrey, iii. 155, after the London plate, and further notes upon it will be found in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 328. There is also a detailed delineation of the New England coast in John Thornton’s Atlas Maritimus, 1701-21.
In this enumeration of the maps or charts which give New England, or any considerable part of it, on a scale sufficient for detail, it is thought that every significant draft is mentioned, though some repetitions, particularly by the Dutch, have been purposely omitted.
Modern maps of New England, which indicate the condition of this period, will be found in Palfrey’s New England, vol. i., showing the geography of 1644, and in vol. iii. that of 1689; and in Uhden’s Geschichte der Congregationalisten, Leipsic, 1840.