In the year Shakespeare died in 1616, New England was born. This was in fact four years before any English speakers permanently   settled in  _ But in 1616 it was already the subject of the bookA Description of New England, by that busy explorer and promoter Captain John Smith, who had visited the land two years before.    According to Smith, New England owes its name to Sir Francis Drake. Not that Drake ever saw or talked about New England, but in sailing around the world he stopped in 1597 at a place on the Pacific coast of North American and called it Nova Albion, the Latin for "New England". Following Drake's lead, Smith called the area at a similar latitude   on the Atlantic coast by the same name, translated into plain English.    The very words New England show the direction of Smith's thinking. This was to be an extension   of Old England, not a new kind of community. The map in his book gives only English names for the places of New England, and he provides a special list showing thirty American Indian names replaced by English ones: Accormack by Plymouth, Massachusets River by Charles River, Kinebeck by Edenborough, to list a few. Some of those changes succeeded. But what finally happened after the Plymouth colonists landed four years later has turned out differently than Smith had imagined, for Indian names as well as English ones still cover the new England area. Captain John Smith arrived at the area New England in  _  .
1579 1614 1616 1620