212 
CAPE COD. 
the discoverer of distances on this river (see Belknap, 
p. 147). Bring was absent from England only about 
six months, and sailed by this part of Cape Cod (Male- 
barre) because it yielded no sassafras, while the French, 
who probably had not heard of Bring, were patiently 
for years exploring the coast in search of a place of set¬ 
tlement, sounding and surveying its harbors. 
John Smith’s map, published in 1616, from observa¬ 
tions in 1614—15, is by many regarded as the oldest 
map of New England. It is the first that was made 
after this country was called New England, for he so 
called it; but in Champlain’s “Voyages,” edition 1613, 
(and Lescarbot, in 1612, quotes a still earlier account 
of his voyage,) there is a map of it made when it was 
known to Christendom as New France, called Carte 
GeograpMque de la Nouvelle Franse faictte par le Sieur 
de Champlain Saint Tongois Cappitaine ordinaire pour 
le roi en la Marine^—faict Ven 1612, from his obser¬ 
vations between 1604 and 1607 ; a map extending from 
Labrador to Cape Cod and westward to the Great Lakes, 
and crowded with information, geographical, ethnograph¬ 
ical, zoological, and botanical. He even gives the vari¬ 
ation of the compass as observed by himself at that date 
on many parts of the coast. This, taken together with 
the many separate charts of harbors and their soundings 
on a large scale, which this volume contains, — among 
the rest, Qui ni he quy (Kennebec), Chouacoit F. 
(Saco K.), Le Beau port, Port St. Louis (near Cape 
Ann), and others on our coast,— but which are not 
in the edition of 1632, makes this a completer map 
of the N(iw England and adjacent northern coast than 
was made for half a century afterward, almost, we might 
be allo\^ ed to say, till another F renchman, Des Barres, 
