l6 VIRGINIA CARTOGRAPHY. 



" ' Nothing is recorded of John White in modern dictionaries 

 of art or biography, yet from De Bry and Hakluyt we learn that 

 he was both an eminent artist and an influential man in his day. 

 He made no less than four voyages to Virginia; was an 'adven- 

 turer ' in the ' First Colonic ' ; the Governor of the ' Second 

 Colonic' in 1587; and the grandfather of Virginia Dare, the first 

 English child born in North America; the friend and agent of 

 Raleigh, and the associate of Hariot. Many of Governor 

 White's letters and journals are preserved by his friend Hakluyt. 

 His last voyage to Virginia was in 1590, as chief of Raleigh's 

 'Fifth Expedition,' to aid and reinforce the Colonic of 1587. 

 He returned unsuccessful the same year and retired to Ireland, 

 whence he dates a letter, long and important, to his friend 

 Hakluyt, ' from my house at Newtowne, in Kylmore, the 4th of 

 February, 1593.' 



"'Theodore De Bry, in his second visit to London in 1588, 

 was introduced to White by Hakluyt, who suggested to that 

 eminent engraver, then projecting his Grand Collection of Voy- 

 ages, to reprint Harlot's ' Report of Virginia,' then just issued, 

 and illustrated with the pictures of John White. Hakluyt also 

 persuaded De Bry to delay his Florida and make the Virginia 

 his first part. White's pictures were copied, and the artist, 

 returning to Frankfort, with incredible enterprise completed the 

 engravings in a masterly manner and issued the work in 1590, 

 in folio, four editions, in four languages — English, French, Ger- 

 man, and Latin — a monument of beauty and art to himself, to 

 Hariot, and to John White. Not more than five or six copies 

 of the English edition are now known in England, and for the 

 last century had never sold complete for less than 100 guineas, 

 and would now bring probably 200 guineas. The copy in the 

 Grenville Library is the finest I have seen.' 



" ' These drawings now offered to the trustees are no doubt 

 the identical paintings that were copied by De Bry and pub- 

 lished in 1590. Beautiful as De Bry's work is, it seems tame in 

 the presence of these original drawings. De Bry copies only 

 about one-third of the drawings. The rest have never been 

 engraved, though some of them were used in the Florida, and 

 in the third and sixth parts. There is a volume of White's 

 (perhaps partly Le Moine's) drawings in the Sloan collection 



