Lederer was a German, and was sent out by Governor Berkeley, of Virginia. He seems to have penetrated westward “to the top of the Apalatœan mountains.” He announced his disbelief in the views of such as held the distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific to be but eight or ten days’ journey, as shown in the “Mapp of Virginia discovered to the Hills,”[782] but was nevertheless inclined to believe that the Indian ocean may indeed stretch an arm into the continent as far as the Appalachian range.
It was on the second of Lederer’s expeditions, going west and southwest from the falls of the James, that he extended his course into North Carolina, and Hawks has endeavored to trace his track. Following him by his names of places, as Ogilby adopted them in his map of 1671, Lederer would appear to have traversed the breadth of South Carolina. “We cannot believe this,” says Dr. Hawks. “The time occupied would not have been sufficient for it. Lederer’s itinerary presents difficulties which we confess we cannot satisfactorily solve.” It seems at least certain that Lederer did not penetrate far enough to encounter the new-comers who were about founding the commonwealth of Locke.
The earliest account which we have of the English settlers at Port Royal, before their removal to the west bank of the Ashley River, is in Thomas Ash’s Carolina, or a description of the present state of that country. London, 1682. The author was clerk on board his majesty’s ship “Richmond,” which was on the coast 1680-82, “with instructions to enquire into the state of the country.”[783]
During the next few years several brief accounts of the new settlements were printed which deserve to be named: Samuel Wilson’s anonymous Account of the Province of Carolina in America; together with an abstract of the Patent and several other necessary and useful particulars, to such as have thoughts of transporting themselves thither. London, 1682 (text, 26 pp.).[784] John Crafford’s anonymous New and most exact Account of the fertile and famous Colony of Carolina.... The whole being a compendious account of a voyage made by an ingenious person, begun Oct., 1682, and finished 1683. Dublin, 1683.[785] Crafford is called supercargo of the ship “James of Erwin.”
Carolina described more fully than heretofore ... from the several relations, ... from divers letters from the Irish settled there and relations of those who have been there several years. Dublin, 1684.[786]
The first edition of Blome’s Present state of his majesty’s isles and territories in America, London, 1687,[787] gave “A new map of Carolina by Robert Morden” (p. 150), and through translations it became a popular book throughout Europe, and did something to bring the new colony to their attention.
Courtenay, in the Charleston Year Book, 1883, p. 377, gives a fac-simile of a map (with a corner map of Charlestown and vicinity) which marks the lots of settlers, and is thought by him to be earlier than 1700.
For the next fifteen years there is little in print about the history of Carolina; but not long after 1700, the attempt of the High-Church party, led by Nicholas Trott, the chief justice, and James Moore, to enforce conformity produced a controversy not without results.