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BECAUSE THE BOOKE WAS PRINTED ERE
the Prince his Highnesse had altered
the names, I intreate the Reader, peruse
this schedule; which will plainely shew him the
correspondence of the old names to the new.
| The old names. | The new. |
| Cape Cod | Cape James |
| Milford haven | |
| Chawum | Barwick |
| Accomack | Plimouth |
| Sagoquas | Oxford |
| Massachusets Mount | Chevit hill |
| Massachusets River | Charles River |
| Totant | Fawmouth |
| A Country not discovered | Bristow |
| Naemkeck | Bastable |
| Cape Trabigzanda | Cape Anne |
| Aggawom | Southhampton |
| Smiths Iles | Smiths Iles |
| Passataquack | Hull |
| Accominticus | Boston |
| Sassanowes Mount | Snodon hill |
| Sowocatuck | Ipswitch |
| Bahana | Dartmouth |
| Sandwich | |
| Aucociscos Mount | Shooters hill |
| Aucocisco | The Base |
| Aumoughcawgen | Cambridge |
| Kinebeck | Edenborough |
| Sagadahock | Leeth |
| Pemmaquid | S. Johns towne |
| Monahigan | Barties Iles |
| Segocket | Norwich |
| Matinnack | Willowby's Iles |
| Metinnicut | Hoghton's Iles |
| Mecadacut | Dunbarton |
| Pennobscot | Aborden |
| Nusket | Lowmonds |
[Simon van de Passe, the second son of the Dutch engraver Crispin van de Passe, seems to have drawn
the map and the portrait of John Smith, even though the word "sculpsit" (engraved) is used at the bottom
of the map. His work was probably accomplished between early Jan. and Mar. 24, 1617 -- witness the
details on the portrait, "Aetatis 37, Anno 1616" (Smith was baptized Jan. 9, 1580; and the legal year 1616
ended Mar. 24, 1617). About the same time van de Passe did a drawing of Pocahontas, which must have
been printed and in circulation before Feb. 22 (see Barbour, Pocahontas and Her World [Boston, 1970], 179).
In both instances van de Passe's drawings were engraved by another artist: Compton Holland in the latter
case, Robert Clerke in the former. Curiously, Clerke is little known either as an engraver or as a publisher
(see the title page). Even more curiously, when the map was again used as an illustration for the Generall
Historie in 1624, Clerke's name was erased. At the same time the name of the printer of the map was changed
from George Low (who may have died) to James Reeve. Note that Humphrey Lownes printed the book
but not the map.
The compass card shows orientation to the N. The scale of leagues, as in the map of Virginia, shows
20 leagues (60 mi.) to the degree of latitude (see the markings on the right and left margins). The latitudes
of the various geographical features themselves are notably accurate, generally; e.g., modern charts show
such sample readings as these: Aborden (upper right), identified with Penobscot village, modern Castine,
44° 25' N lat.; Smiths lies, modern Isles of Shoals, just below 43°; the mouth of the River Charles is at
42° 22'; and the top, or N, edge of Cape Cod is almost exactly right, at 42° 5'.
As a product of Smith's own surveying, the map of New England offers an interesting contrast with
the Smith/Hole map of Virginia, in which a certain amount of hearsay evidence (from Indians, especially)
was incorporated. For this map Smith struck out from the "Barty lies" (Monahiggan, modern Monhegan
Island) and headed to Lowmonds (Nusket, probably modern Naskeag Point), his farthest point to the NE.
From there he followed the coast SW and S to the bottom of Massachusetts Bay, back up to Cape Cod, and
then around and along the ocean side of the cape as far S as the rips and shoals, whence he scurried back to
his ship, at or near Monhegan Island. If we may assume that Smith's exploring, surveying, and trading
began about the middle of June (see the top of p. 2) and ended July 18 (see New Englands Trials [1620],
sig. B3r), in less than five weeks he had sailed roughly as far as he did on his Chesapeake Bay voyages
from June 2 to Sept. 7, 1608.
The map was by no means the first to be made, and some previous sketches were consulted by Smith
himself (apparently not Samuel de Champlain's Carte géographique de la Nouvelle France [Paris, 1612-1613]).
But Smith's map is the most detailed of the early ones that survive, for the area covered in it: the coast of
Maine W of Mount Desert Island, the narrow bit of New Hampshire, and E Massachusetts to the underside
of Cape Cod (see p. 5n, below). Champlain's map had included the vast region to the N and E, and
part of the area was covered in Sir William Alexander's map of 1624, which included the coast from Nantucket
Island to the Straits of Belle Isle (in An Encouragement to Colonies ... [London, 1625]). This was
followed by a sketch map of the S part of New England appended to William Wood's New Englands
Prospect ... (London, 1634). Neither of these latter two maps rivaled the work of Champlain and Smith,
and Wood went so far as to refer his readers "to the thrice memorable discoverer of those parts [N of the
Bay] Captaine Smith, who hath likewise fully described the Southerne and North-east part of New England"
(ibid., 2).
It is unfortunate from the ethnological point of view that Smith listed only the English names that he
and Prince Charles gave to the Indian localities on the map itself. To offset this, the endpaper maps in this
edition show the locations of about two dozen Indian place-names mentioned in the text or listed in the
inserted sheet at the beginning.
The editor is grateful to the William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for permission to
reproduce the first state of this map, which appears here slightly reduced.]
7. This inserted leaf is found only in some copies. The copy of the Description of N.E.
carried by the Pilgrims in 1620 seems to have contained one (see n., following).
8. Of this, William Bradford wrote: "A word or two by the way of this cape. It was
thus first named [Cape Cod] by Captain Gosnold and his company, Anno 1602, and
after by Captain Smith was called Cape James; but it retains the former name amongst
seamen" (William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison
[New York, 1952], 60-61). Compare this insert with the reprint in the Generall Historie,
205, where "The Harbor at Cape Cod" is inserted one line below, opposite "Milforth
haven."
1. In Plymouth Plantation, Book II, chap. 11 (written after 1630), Bradford quotes
Smith's friend Thomas Dermer as writing that "Charlton" would be a better location
than Plymouth, "because there the savages are less to be feared" (Plymouth Plantation,
82). This is the present site of Boston, just S of the Charles River, but it is interesting to
note that "Charlton" had not been added to Smith's map before the eighth state, which
seems to be found first in a copy of the Advertisements (1631). The implications are that
the Pilgrims as late as c. 1631 were still interested enough in Smith's writings to have
noticed such late changes made in the map.
2. The first, and best-spelled, mention of Smith's mistress in Istanbul, Charatza
Trabigzanda (see the True Travels, 23).
3. This has nothing to do with modern Boston. Smith's Boston (Accominticus)
seems to have been at the foot of modern Mount Agamenticus, between York Beach and
Ogunquit, perhaps 40 mi. (65 km.) SW of Portland.
4. The Generall Historie adds a description but no "old name" -- "A good Harbor
within that Bay" (p. 205). The location was probably Back Cove, Portland.
5. Nusket (renamed for the Lomond Hills, which lie between the Firth of Forth
and the Firth of Tay, Scotland) would seem, in the editor's opinion, to be the Naskeag
Point at the E extremity of Penobscot Bay on modern maps. The Generall Historie, 205,
lists separately the three places that Smith named himself.
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