VIRGINIA CARTOGRAPHY. 



Before beginning, it may be well to remind the reader that it 

 required many years for a trustworthy survey to be made of such 

 a distant country as America; in the meantime, the imagination 

 of the old cartographers ran riot, and maps of this continent look 

 more .like illustrations of Noah's ark, with abundance of water, 

 quaint animals and birds, than serious contributions to history. 



Let us illustrate this statement in an anecdote told by Sir 

 Walter Raleigh. 



" I remember a pretty jest of Don Pedro de Sarmiente, a 

 worthy Spanish gentleman, who had been employed by his king 

 in planting a colony upon the Straits of Magellan, for when I 

 asked him, being then my prisoner, some questions about an 

 island in those straits, which might, methought, have done either 

 benefit or displeasure to his enterprise, he told me merrily that 

 it was called the 'painter's wife's island'; saying, while the fel- 

 low drew that map, his wife, sitting by, desired him to put in one 

 country for her, that she in imagination might have one island 

 of her own." 



The first map of Virginia bears the name of John With, and 

 was made in manuscript about the year 1585. Why Hariot did 

 not insert it in his description of Virginia, published first in 1588, 

 as he and John With must have been together and cognizant of 

 each other's doings, is a question that can be left only to the 

 imagination. 



John With, or White the painter, and John White, the gov- 

 ernor of Virginia appointed by Raleigh, have been identified by 

 modern writers as one and the same person. Why this should 

 have been done I do not know, for, as far I can find out after 

 considerable study of the subject, I do not think the conclusion is 

 warranted by the information we have relating to their lives. 



That there is little known of the painter is not surprising, as 

 painters were looked upon in those days as of small consequence, 

 but I am surprised at the little information that has reached us 

 about the governor. 



I will now investigate very fully, as far as my reading has 

 gone, the identity of these two men, quoting all I can find for and 

 against the above conclusion, so that the reader may judge for 

 himself in the premises. 



