The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare's day; a city dirty, with ill-paved streets unlighted at night, no sidewalks, foul gutters, wooden houses, gable ends to the street, set thickly with small windows from which slops and refuse were at any moment of the day or night liable to be emptied upon the heads of the passers by; petty little shops in which were beginning to be displayed the silks and luxuries of the continent; a city crowded and growing rapidly, subject to pestilences and liable to sweeping conflagrations.The Thames had no bridges, and hundreds of boats plied between London side and Southwark, where were most of the theatres, the bull-baitings, the bear-fighting, the public gardens, the residences of the hussies, and other amusements that Bankside, the resort of all classes bent on pleasure, furnished high or low.
At no time before or since was there such fantastical fashion in dress, both in cut and gay colors, nor more sumptuousness in costume or luxury in display among the upper classes, and such squalor in low life.The press teemed with tracts and pamphlets, written in language "as plain as a pikestaff," against the immoralities of the theatres, those "seminaries of vice," and calling down the judgment of God upon the cost and the monstrosities of the dress of both men and women; while the town roared on its way, warned by sermons, and instructed in its chosen path by such plays and masques as Ben Jonson's "Pleasure reconciled to Virtue."The town swarmed with idlers, and with gallants who wanted advancement but were unwilling to adventure their ease to obtain it.
There was much lounging in apothecaries' shops to smoke tobacco, gossip, and hear the news.We may be sure that Smith found many auditors for his adventures and his complaints.There was a good deal of interest in the New World, but mainly still as a place where gold and other wealth might be got without much labor, and as a possible short cut to the South Sea and Cathay.The vast number of Londoners whose names appear in the second Virginia charter shows the readiness of traders to seek profit in adventure.The stir for wider freedom in religion and government increased with the activity of exploration and colonization, and one reason why James finally annulled the Virginia, charter was because he regarded the meetings of the London Company as opportunities of sedition.
Smith is altogether silent about his existence at this time.We do not hear of him till 1612, when his "Map of Virginia" with his description of the country was published at Oxford.The map had been published before: it was sent home with at least a portion of the description of Virginia.In an appendix appeared (as has been said)a series of narrations of Smith's exploits, covering the rime he was in Virginia, written by his companions, edited by his friend Dr.
Symonds, and carefully overlooked by himself.
Failing to obtain employment by the Virginia company, Smith turned his attention to New England, but neither did the Plymouth company avail themselves of his service.At last in 1614 he persuaded some London merchants to fit him out for a private trading adventure to the coast of New England.Accordingly with two ships, at the charge of Captain Marmaduke Roydon, Captain George Langam, Mr.John Buley, and William Skelton, merchants, he sailed from the Downs on the 3d of March, 1614, and in the latter part of April "chanced to arrive in New England, a part of America at the Isle of Monahiggan in 43 1/2 of Northerly latitude." This was within the territory appropriated to the second (the Plymouth) colony by the patent of 1606, which gave leave of settlement between the 38th and 44th parallels.
Smith's connection with New England is very slight, and mainly that of an author, one who labored for many years to excite interest in it by his writings.He named several points, and made a map of such portion of the coast as he saw, which was changed from time to time by other observations.He had a remarkable eye for topography, as is especially evident by his map of Virginia.This New England coast is roughly indicated in Venazzani's Plot Of 1524, and better on Mercator's of a few years later, and in Ortelius's "Theatrum Orbis Terarum " of 1570; but in Smith's map we have for the first time a fair approach to the real contour.
Of Smith's English predecessors on this coast there is no room here to speak.Gosnold had described Elizabeth's Isles, explorations and settlements had been made on the coast of Maine by Popham and Weymouth, but Smith claims the credit of not only drawing the first fair map of the coast, but of giving the name " New England " to what had passed under the general names of Virginia, Canada, Norumbaga, etc.