John Lederer’s map has been unjustly discounted by some cartographic historians for the inaccuracies it introduced. However, his work is the first to detail anything about the interior of Virginia and North Carolina, specifically the Blue Ridge Mountains, and it encouraged a whole new era of exploration. It introduced the recognisable long Savannah at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the ‘arenosa Deserta’ that were to be used by cartographers into the mid-eighteenth century. Lederer was a physician from Hamburg born c.1644. Arriving in America around 1670 he quickly befriended Governor Berkeley of Virginia. Lederer was interested in the interior, the native Indians it held, and not least, like John Smith before him, convinced that a route to the Pacific Ocean was within reach beyond the mountains. This encouraged the Governor to commission Lederer to undertake an exploration of the region.

“His first march began on 9 March 1670. He followed the South Anna River to the north of present-day Richmond. He continued as far as the Blue Ridge Mountains labelled Mons Guliel Gubern, near Hawk Bill or Swift Run Gap to the north-west of Charlottesville. ‘Here I did wander in Snow, for the most part, till the Four and twentieth day of March, hoping to find some passage through the Mountains; but the coldness of the Air and Earth together, seizing my Hands and Feet with numbness, put me to a ne plus ultra; and therefore having found my Indian at the foot of the Mountain with my Horse, I returned back by the same way that I went’.

“It is his second journey that has overshadowed his life. He left on 20 May 1670 with a group of twenty colonists on horseback and five Indians, led by Major William Harris. They tracked directly westward from the James River at present-day Richmond for eight days, only to find the same river again. Tired and disappointed they tried to force Lederer to return with them. He showed them his commission but they abandoned him ‘a prey to Indians and savage beasts’. Lederer continued with Jackzetavon, a Susquehanna Indian. For four days they travelled in a southerly direction without meeting any Indians. They reached a Saponi village on a branch of the Roanoke. There he received instructions on how to cross westwards avoiding the Appalachian Range. This route is now known to have gone around the southern tip of the range in northern Georgia. It was not discovered until later in the century. Lederer reached the ‘Akenatzy’ (Occaneechi) island settlement on the Roanoke River near present-day Clarksville, Virginia.

“The third journey pushed south-west through the Piedmonts in North Carolina. Lederer reached the Catawba River near present-day Rock Hill, South Carolina. Here he made his infamous error stating that three miles away was a great lake about ten leagues broad. Cartographers seized upon this as confirmation of Cornelis Claesz’s lake of c.1602, popularised by Jodocus Hondius from 1606. Lederer returned by a more easterly route to avoid the ‘great Marish’ (marsh). This took him, in July, through the pine barrens of North Carolina ‘a barren Sandy desert, where I suffered miserably for want of water; the heat of the Summer having drunk all the Springs dry’. This region Lederer called the ‘arenosa Deserta’, and it took him twelve days to cross. He reached the country of the ‘Toskiroro’ (Tuscarora) Indians, where they took his gun and ammunition. He left quickly and returned to Appomattox, Virginia, on 18 July.

“Not dispirited, Lederer tried again to find a passage just one month later. On 20 August 1670 he left from the falls of the Rappahannock in northern Virginia with ten Englishmen and five Indians. Upon reaching the Blue Ridge Mountains they saw ‘a prodigious Mountain’, identified as ‘Mons Car Reg’ (King Charles Mountain), the peak enveloped by others ‘high and inaccessible’. They then returned. Lederer became a citizen of Maryland after being encouraged to leave Virginia. He had become quite unpopular, most probably because of personal debts and the fact that his voyages had been financed by public money. In Maryland he befriended William Talbot, nephew of Lord Baltimore and secretary of the Province of Maryland. Lederer received a permit from the provincial government to open a fur trade route along his path to Carolina. Nothing appears to have come of this. However, the Virginia traders soon profited from the route he opened to the region of the Catawba and Cherokee. Lederer went on to Connecticut in 1674 and attracted the attention of Governor John Winthrop the Younger. He boarded a vessel in Fairfield, Connecticut, which sailed for Germany on 16 January 1675.

“However, it is William Talbot we have to thank for the published book. He returned to Ireland in the summer of 1671 as Sir William, Baronet of Carton, and went on to London. He translated Lederer’s journal and supplemented it with personal notes of his own. Published in 1672 as ‘The Discoveries of John Lederer’, it is an extremely valuable account. As de Vorsey states it is the first record to approach that of John Smith ‘for quality of insight and understanding of the Indians of the Southeast’. In it Lederer writes of the infamous lake and that he tasted its brackish water and ‘I judged it to be about ten leagues broad; for were not the other shore very high, it could not be discerned from Ushery [an Indian village]. How far this lake tends westerly, or where it ends, I could neither learn nor guess’. He heard of what he thought was the great sea to the west: ‘I have heard several Indians testifie, that the Nation of Rickohockans, who dwell not far to the Westward of the Apalataean Mountains, are seated upon a land, as they term it, of great Waves; by which I suppose they mean the Sea-shore’. So much did he believe in the theory that he discounted the possibility that they were describing the wavelike land of the region.

“The book contained this extremely rare map of the area, engraved by Thomas Cross. It is often wanting from examples. In the lower right six rivers are depicted: the ‘Rorenock alias Shanan fl:’ (Roanoke); ‘Apamatuck fl:’; ‘Powhathan fl:’ (James); ‘Pæmæoncock fl:’ (Pamunkey); ‘Metapenan fl: rap’ (Mattaponi); and the last unnamed is presumably the Rappahannock. On this last river the home of one ‘Rob Talifer’ is displayed. There were no further issues of the map. Its influence was considerable, the main features would be found on maps well into the eighteenth century. It was first seen in the Ogilby, Thornton, Blome and Morden and Berry maps, all published within months. There are a few reproductions published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” (Burden). Alvord & Bidgood (1912) pp. 131-71; Baer (1949) no. 72; Burden (2007) 427; Church (1907) no. 619; Cumming, Hillier, Quinn, & Williams (1974) pp. 83-4, 102-3; Cumming & de Vorsey (1998) pp. 15-17, 49 n. 99-100, 79-80 & 161.