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Copper-engraved map, hand-colored. 38x49 cm. (15x19½").

he region surrounding the Chesapeake Bay, very hilly, with depiction at upper left of the interior of a Indian dwelling labeled "Status Regins Powhaten," and at left a native holding a bow, called "Habitus fœminarum in Provincia Sasque fahanougs." Burden notes that "This is Henricus Hondius' derivative of John Smith's highly important map of Virginia, 1612. It is, however, drawn from his deceased brother Jodocus' version of 1618. The two had led separate careers for at least ten years and in 1629, upon the death of Jodocus, Willem Blaeu acquired a number of plates from the estate. About thirty of these formed the nucleus of Blaeu's Atlantis Appendix of 1630. This challenge to the atlas of Henricus, which was by now quite dated, stimulated fierce competition between the two houses. The sale of plates must have occurred by 2 March 1630 as a contract of that date survives where Henricus Hondius and his partner Joannes Janssonius, angry at the sale of plates to their competitor, engaged engravers to cut a number of new plates after those of Jodocus within eighteen months so that they could advance their own atlas. The Virginia was one of the first engraved as it appears in Janssonius' Atlantis Appendix of 1630. Attractively engraved it is the only Smith derivative to bear an Indian facing the Chesapeake Bay..." The present copy of the map was issued in the 1639 edition of Hondius' Nouvel Atlas, with French text on verso (with the signature mark Oooooooo). Burden 228, State 1; Tooley, Mapping of America, p.165.