57. Had the distinguished navigators who early visited the coasts of North America illustrated their narratives by drawings and maps, it would have added greatly to their value. Capt. John Smith's map, though necessarily indefinite and general, is indispensable to the satisfactory study of his still more indefinite "Description of New England." It is, perhaps, a sufficient apology for the vagueness of Smith's statements, and therefore it ought to be borne in mind, that his work was originally written, probably, from memory, at least for the most part, while he was a prisoner on board a French man-of-war in 1615. This may be inferred from the following statement of Smith himself. In speaking of the movement of the French fleet, he says: "Still we spent our time about the Iles neere _Fyall_: where to keepe my perplexed thoughts from too much meditation of my miserable estate, I writ this discourse" _Vide Description of New England_ by Capt. John Smith, London, 1616. While the descriptions of our coast left by Champlain are invaluable to the historian and cannot well be overestimated, the process of making these surveys, with his profound love of such explorations and adventures, must have given him great personal satisfaction and enjoyment. It would be difficult to find any region of similar extent that could offer, on a summer's excursion, so much beauty to his eager and critical eye as this. The following description of the Gulf of Maine, which comprehends the major part of the field surveyed by Champlain, that lying between the headlands of Cape Sable and Cape Cod, gives an excellent idea of the infinite variety and the unexpected and marvellous beauties that are ever revealing themselves to the voyager as he passes along our coast.--