SOURCES

  • [1] Captain John Smith, The Historye of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Islands, 1624. Generall Historie of the Bermudas, now called the Summer Iles (London, 1624), 170.
  • [2] America (pars undecima), appendix, plate xx, reproduced in Miguel de Asua and Robert French, A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005), 120.
  • [3] The illustration is reproduced in De Asua and French, A New World of Animals, 154-55. The description from Pietro Martire is from Edward Arber, Richard Eden, Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, The First Three English Books on America (Birmingham, 1885), 98.
  • [4] John Smith, Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion (1608), 27.
  • [5] The quote is from John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, 26.
  • [6] Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, translated by Richard Eden, edited by Edward Arber, The First Three English Books on America (Birmingham, 1885), 131.
  • [7] Miguel de Asua and Robert French, A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005), 2-3.

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New World Wonders

Instructions

For explorers and colonists from Europe, North and South America were full of strange new lifeforms—stunning and surprising plants and animals, from insects to birds to sea creatures. Examine the following drawings and descriptions created by European visitors to the Americas. Can you identify what plant or animal is being described or depicted?

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