EDITORIAL NOTES.
A. Maps of Virginia or the Chesapeake.—There seem to have been visits of the Spaniards to the Chesapeake at an early day (1566-1573), and they may have made a temporary settlement (1570) on the Rappahannock. (Robert Greenhow in C. Robinson’s Discoveries in the West, p. 487, basing on Barcia’s Ensayo Chronologico; Historical Magazine, iii. 268, 318; J. G. Shea in Beach’s Indian Miscellany.) In the map which De Bry gave with the several editions of Hariot in 1590, the bay appears as “Chesepiooc Sinus;” but in the more general maps, shortly after, the name Chesipooc, or some form of it, is applied rather wildly to some bay on the coast, as by Wytfliet’s in 1597, or earlier still by Thomas Hood, 1592, where the “B. de S. Maria” of the Spaniards, if intended for the Chesapeake, is given an outline as vague as the rest of the neighboring coast, where it appears as shown in the sketch in chapter vi. between the Figs. 1 and 2. It may be, as Stevens contends (Historical and Geographical Notes), that not before Smith were the entangling Asian coast-lines thoroughly eliminated from this region; but certainly there was no wholly recognizable delineation of the bay till Smith recorded the results of the explorations which he describes in his Generall Historie, chs. v. and vi. Smith indicates by crosses on the affluents of the bay the limits of his own observations. Strachey’s Historie of Travaile, p. 42.
In Smith’s Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Country, etc., Oxford, 1612, W. S., or William Strachey, eked out the little tract with an appendix of others’ contributions. Strachey afterwards adopted a considerable part in his Historie of Travaile. Mr. Deane, in his edition of the True Relation, p. xxi, has given a full account of this tract. Smith reprinted it in his Generall Historie with some changes and additions and small omissions. Purchas reprinted it in his Pilgrimes, but not without changes and omissions of small extent, and with some additions, which he credits on the margin to Smith; and he had earlier given an abstract of it in his Pilgrimage. There is a copy of the original in the Lenox Library. Tyler, American Literature, i. 30, notices it.
The map accompanying this tract, engraved by W. Hole, appeared in three impressions (Stevens’s Bibliotheca Historica, 1870, no. 1,903). It was altered somewhat, and the words, “Page 41, Smith,” were put in the lower right-hand corner, when it was next used in the Generall Historie, 1624 and later; and in 1625 it was again inserted at pp. 1836-37 of Purchas’s Pilgrimes, vol. iv. De Bry next re-engraved it in part xiii. of his Great Voyages, printed in German, 1627, and in Latin 1634; and in part xiv. in German in 1630 (Carter-Brown Catalogue, i. 370-71). It was also re-engraved for Gottfriedt’s Newe Welt, published at Frankfort, and marked “Erforshet und beschriben durch Capitain Iohan Schmidt.” The compiler of this last book was J. Ph. Abelin, who had been one of De Bry’s co-workers, and he made this work in some sort an abridgment of De Bry’s, use being made of his plates, often inserting them in the text, the book being first issued in 1631, and again in 1655. (Muller’s Books on America, 1872, no. 636, and (1877) no. 1,269.)
The map was next used in two English editions of Hondy’s Mercator, “Englished by W. S.” 1635, etc., but with some fanciful additions, as Mr. Deane says (Bohn’s Lowndes, p. 1103). The map of the coast in De Laet, 1633 and 1640, was, it would seem, founded upon it for the Chesapeake region; cf. also the map of Virginia and Florida called “par Mercator,” of date 1633, and the maps by Blaeu, of 1655 and 1696.
Once more Smith’s plot adorned, in 1671, Ogilby’s large folio on America, p. 193, as it had also found place in the prototype of Ogilby, the Amsterdam Montanus of 1671 and 1673. In these two books (1671-73) also appeared the map “Virginiæ, partis australis et Floridæ, partis orientalis, nova descriptio,” which shows the coast from the Chesapeake down to the 30th degree of north latitude.
Smith’s was finally substantially copied as late as 1735, as the best available source, in A Short Account of the First Settlement of the Provinces, etc., London, 1735,—a contribution to the literature of the boundary dispute, and was doubtless the basis of the map in Keith’s Virginia in 1738; but it finally gave place to Fry and Jefferson’s map of the region in 1750.
A phototype fac-simile, reduced about one quarter, of the earliest state of the original map in the Harvard College copy of the Oxford tract of 1612 is given herewith. A similar fac-simile, full size, is given in Mr. Deane’s reprint of the True Relation, though it was not published in that tract. A lithographic fac-simile, full size, but without the pictures in the upper corners, is given in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of Strachey, p. 23. Other reproductions will be found in Scharf’s Maryland, i. 6, Scharf’s Baltimore City and County, 1881, p. 38, and in Cassell’s United States, p. 27. That in the Richmond (1819) reprint of the Generall Historie is well done, full size, on copper. This copperplate was rescued in 1867 from the brazier’s pot by the late Thomas H. Wynne, and at the sale of his library in 1875 was purchased for the State Library of Virginia.
Neill, in his Virginia Company, p. 191, mentions “A mapp of Virginia, discovered to ye Hills and its latt. from 35 deg. and ½ neer Florida to 41 deg. bounds of New England. Domina Virginia Ferrar collegit, 1651,” and identifies this compiler of the map as a daughter of John Ferrar. The map we suppose to be the one engraved by Goddard. This map is associated with a London publication of 1650, called Virgo triumphans, or Virginia richly and truly valued, which is usually ascribed to Edward Williams, but is held nevertheless to be in substance the work of John Ferrar of Geding. There were two editions of this year (1650): Brinley Catalogue no. 3,816; Quaritch, General Catalogue, no. 12,535, held at £36 John Ferrar’s copy of the first edition, with his notes, and the original drawing of the map, inserted by Ferrar to make up a deficiency in the first edition, of which he complains. Quaritch prices a good copy without such annotations at £25. The second edition (1650) had additions, as shown in the title, Virginia, more especially the South part thereof, second edition, with addition of the discovery of silkworms, etc. In this the same map appeared engraved as above, and the Huth copy of it has it in two states, one without, and the other with an oval portrait of Sir Francis Drake. (Huth Catalogue, v. 1594.) The Harvard College copy lacks the map, which is described by Quaritch (no. 12,536, who prices this edition at £32) in a copy from the Bathurst Library, as a folding sheet exhibiting New Albion as well as Virginia, with the purpose of showing an easy northern passage to the Pacific, the text representing the Mississippi as dividing the two countries, and flowing into the South Sea; see also Menzies’ Catalogue, no. 2,143, and the note in Major’s edition of Strachey, p. 34, on a map published in 1651 in London. This second edition was the one which Force followed in reprinting it in his Tracts, vol. iii. no. 11. The Huth Catalogue notes a third edition, Virginia in America richly valued, 1651. The map is given on a later page.