MAEYLAXD GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 27 



long time unsurpassed and served as a basis of exploration and settle- 

 ment. In examining the map which Smith compiled from notes taken 

 on this famous voyage of discovery, one is struck with the accuracy with 

 which the main features of St. Mary's County are recorded. The curved 

 shore line of Chesapeake Bay from Cedar Point to Point Lookout is 

 characteristically portrayed and the irregular courses of the Potomac 

 and Patuxent rivers, together with their more important estuaries are 

 defined with surprising accuracy and the surface of the county is dotted 

 over with names of Indian settlements and with trees of various kinds 

 which were probably meant to indicate different types of forest growth. 



In 1635 the Lord Baltimore map appeared. This map included most of 

 tidewater Maryland, but when compared with the Smith map of the same 

 region, is far less accurate in detail and very much more crude in execu- 

 tion. St. Mary's Coiinty is well defined and in outlines does not differ 

 markedly from the same region represented by Smith. A hillock shows 

 roughly the position of the Drum Cliffs and the same methods which 

 were used by Smith are employed to represent forests. 



In 1651, the Farrer map of the environs of Chesapeake Bay and the 

 surrounding country was published. This map, which was drawn by 

 Virginia Farrer, was distorted so as to prove that " in ten dayes march 

 with 50 foote and 30 horsemen from the head of leames River, ouer 

 those hills and through the rich adiacent Vallyes beautified with profBt- 

 able river which necessarily must run into yt peacefull Indian Sea " one 

 might arrive in New Albion or California. In this map, the region now 

 occupied by St. Mary's County was so distorted that the map was prac- 

 tically useless. 



Fiften years later, in 1666, Geoi-ge Alsop published a map which em- 

 braced the environs of Chesapeake Bay from a point in Virginia a little 

 south of the Potomac Eiver northward to what is now in part Delaware 

 and Pennsylvania. The map was issued in a small pamphlet and was 

 based on personal observation throughout the region represented. Al- 

 though many of the details which were placed on the map had been 

 obtained by personal exploration, still Alsop was doubtless familiar with 

 the early Smith map and was guided not a little by it. The map is on 



