Note 44 — Chapter X · Globes and Globe Makers of the Early Seventeenth Century. The Dutch Scientific Masters and Their Preëminent Leadership

Brown, A. The Genesis of the United States. Boston and New York, 1891. Vol. I, p. 229.

Historians of this period in American history, with scarcely an exception, have taken it for granted that the expression “from sea to sea” means from the Atlantic to the Pacific, apparently not stopping to inquire as to the geographical notions entertained at the time of the granting of the Charter concerning the regions in question. The interpretation here offered takes into consideration the fact that Jodocus Hondius, perhaps the most distinguished geographer and map maker of his day, was much in favor in England at the time of the formation of the London Company and was much consulted concerning the geography of the New World. What he thought of the Virginia region to the “west and northwest” he has laid down in his large world map. It seems all but proven that the statement “from sea to sea west and northwest” means from the Atlantic to the great but indefinite inland sea “Mare Septentrionale Americae.”

To interpret this expression as meaning from the Atlantic to the Pacific shows the historian, as Freeman has stated it, “in bondage to the modern map.” Here is a striking illustration of the importance attaching to the study of historical geography, and to its subordinate branch, historical cartography. Blaeu, Plancius, Greuter, and others, if not so clear and emphatic in their presentation of this region, evidently entertained practically the same geographical notion as Hondius.