With the ink library stamp of the Dépôt des Cartes et Plans de la Marine, founded in 1720 under Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703–1772), to maintain the secrecy, and efficiency of the manuscript charts made during the increasing number of French naval voyages, by copying, updating, and printing them.

Interestingly, these globe gores record a large inland body of water labelled ‘Lacus Sal/sus’, or Salt Lake on the East Coast of the present-day United 

s. The lake is joined to the Atlantic by two rivers ‘R. Grande’ at roughly forty degrees north, and an unnamed river at roughly thirty-seven degrees north. In Virginia, the name 'Rassawick' (Rassawek, the capital of the Monacans) is indicated just north of the southern river. Furthermore, the island of 'Croaton' (now Hatteras Island) is shown just offshore. Croatoan Island was believed to be the location that the English inhabitants of the abandoned Roanoke Colony relocated to, one theory being that they culturally assimilated with the Croatan people. 

The work has unusually engraved gores were printed in a pale sepia ink. It is possible that this was to make it easier for a colourist to amend the printed details on the globe in the light of rapidly changing information.

The Sunderland Collection

These exceptionally rare globe gores were prepared by Jodocus Hondius II, sometime shortly after the discovery of the Le Maire Strait in 1616. The gores correspond to an approximately fifteen-centimetre terrestrial globe, of which no completed examples are known to exist. Furthermore, there is only one other known example of the gores, which is located at the Musée de l'Armée in Paris.

The gores are also one of the few contemporary pieces to relate Captain John Smith's (1580–1631) first mapping of Virginia, with its alleged giant inland salt lake. Smith discussed his survey in a letter to the explorer Henry Hudson who in turn showed this material to Hondius and allowed him to make copies of Smith's manuscript maps for his own works including this set of globe gores.

The source of the map's cartography has eluded map scholars for some time; those that commented on the mapping (and there have not been many) tie it to previous renderings of the Sea of Verrazanno, the great inland sea that was popular on maps of the mid sixteenth century. However, the Sea of Verrazanno had largely been dismissed by serious mapmakers by the late sixteenth century, and here the region includes Native American toponyms that reflect actual observations of the region in question, not just century-old conjecture.

This map also shows the relationship between John Smith, Henry Hudson and Jodocus Hondius. In mid-1608, Smith was interested in the possibility of the presence of the Great Lakes, which he thought could provide an alternate passage to the East Indies. He was in touch with Hudson, who then allowed Hondius to copy Smith's manuscript maps for his own archive.

These astonishingly rare globe gores are remarkable for their inclusion of the territory of Virginia, mapping of the Eastern coast of North America, and a large inland 'Salt Lake', after John Smith and Henry Hudson. They were produced sometime shortly after the 'discovery' of the Le Maire Strait in January 1616 by Dutch navigators Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten. The map details a plethora of Native American toponyms, places encountered by English colonists and navigators such as Rassawek and Croatoan.

The work has unusually engraved gores were printed in a pale sepia ink and it is possible that this was to make it easier for a colourist to amend the printed details on the globe in the light of rapidly changing information.

Globe Gores by Jodocus Hondius