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Fragment B. 1613.
THE SMITH/HOLE MAP
Reported in Print
[Source: Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations Of The World ...
(London, 1613), 634–635.]
After a condensed account of events in Jamestown up to 1612, Purchas
referred briefly to Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations for a description
of Sir Walter Ralegh's Roanoke colony, adding:
partly by word of mouth, partly by his Mappe thereof in print, and
more fully by a Manuscript which hee courteously communicated to
mee, hathacquainted me with that whereof himselfe with great perill
and paine, had beene the discoverer, being in his discoveries taken
Prisoner, and escaping their furie, yea receiving much honour and
admiration amongst them, by reason of his discourses to them of the
motion of the Sunne, of the parts of the World, of the Sea, etc., which
was occasioned by a Dyall then found about him. They carryed him
prisoner to Powhatan, and there beganne the English acquaintance
with that Savage Emperour.
From here to the middle of the next page Purchas merely condensed
sections of Smith's Map of Virginia, at the end of which he suddenly (and
typically) stops, for fear he might "exceede ... the Readers patience." Yet
he adds two sentences well worth quoting here:
booke when it shall bee printed, further. This the Captaine saith,
that hee hathbeene in many places of Asia and Europe, in some of
Africa and America, but of all, holds Virginia by the naturall endowments,
the fittest place for an earthly Paradise.
Two observations should be made: (1) this fragment is the source of our
knowledge that the Smith/Hole map was in print and available to the public
while Smith's Map of Virginia was still in press; and (2) it contains the earliest
printed statement that Smith had traveled in Asia and Africa, though his
repetition of the statement in his dedication of that work to Edward Seymour,
the earl of Hertford, was only a matter of a few months away.
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