[433] See Cabo de Baxos, or the Place of Cape Cod, in the old Cartology, by B. F. De Costa, New York, 1881, p. 7.
[The Editor dissents from the views given in this elaborate tract and adopted in the text of the present chapter; and thinks that Cape Cod, and not Sandy Hook, is the conspicuous peninsula which appears on the early maps. In the general coast-line Cape Cod is a protuberant angle, while Sandy Hook is in the bight of a bay which forms an entering angle, and, unlike Cape Cod, is of no significance in relation to the trend of the continental shore. There is the least difficulty, in the matter of the bearings of one point from another, with considering this feature to be Cape Cod; and we must remember that the compass was the only instrument of tolerable precision which the early navigators had, and its records are the only ones to be depended upon. It is accordingly never safe to discard the record of it, unless under strong convictions as to a misreading of its evidence. The Editor does not receive such convictions from the moderate variations of latitude, which often were one or two degrees or even more out of the way in the old maps; nor from the coast names, which by no means were constant in position, and were not infrequently sadly confused and made to appear more than once under translated forms. The process of copying such from antecedent maps was far more liable to error than the transmission of the general direction and the sinuosities of the coast line. The cartographers sometimes scattered names, seemingly for little purpose but to fill up spaces. Coast names, before settlements were fixed, were of the utmost delusiveness, except sometimes in the case of isolated features, not to be confounded.—Ed.]
[434] [See vol. iv. of this present work.—Ed.]
[435] On the variations found in ten different impressions of the map, see Winsor, in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 52 [where a section of it, with the portrait of Smith, is given in heliotype. A reduced heliotype of the whole map is given herewith. Hulsius, when he translated Smith’s book for his voyages, made an excellent reproduction of the map, which appears in three of his sections. The earliest of the modern reproductions was that in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. Palfrey has given it, reduced by photolithography, but not very satisfactorily, in his New England, i. 95. It was re-engraved by Swett in 1865 for Veazie’s edition of the Description, and the plate was subsequently altered to correspond with later states of the original plate, and in this condition appears in Jenness’s Isles of Shoals. It is reduced from this re-engraving in Bryant and Gay’s United States, i. 518.—Ed.]
[436] In his Description, p. 67, Smith says, “At last it pleased Sir Ferdinando Gorge, and Master Doctor Sutliffe, Deane of Exceter, to conceve so well of these proiects and my former imployments, as induced them to make a new adventure with me in those parts, whither they have so often sent to their continuall losse.”
[437] See his Henry Hudson in Holland, printed at The Hague, 1859, pp. 43-66.
[438] Beschryvinghe van der Samoyeden Landt in Tartarien, etc., Amsterdam, 1612. The language on the map is, “ende by Westen Nova Albion in mar del sur.” See also Henry Hudson in Holland, which shows how Hudson happened to make his voyage to our coast.
[439] Verrazano the Explorer, 1881, p. 57. Hakluyt, iii. 737. Endicott, in 1661, called New England “This Patmos;” Calendar of State Papers, America and the West Indies, London, 1880, p. 9.
[440] True Travels, p. 58.
[441] [It however still kept its place on the maps of De Laet, 1633, 1640, etc.—Ed.]