In the early history of colonization in North America, Samuel de Champlain and William Bradford were both instrumental in establishing written records of the period and the experiences of those first intrepid explorers and colonists. Indeed, both men were personally involved in the exploration and settlement of several key areas along the eastern coast of the present day United States and Canada. However, while the two both experienced the new world of North American in the seventeenth century, their written histories of those experiences contain several interesting differences. In Champlain's The Voyages of Sieur de Champlain (1613) and Voyages and Discoveries (1619), it is obvious that Champlain's history is rooted much more in the factual aspects of the experience, such as the geography and wildlife of the region. Bradford's history, in contrast, is focused on the religious and philosophical basis of the new settlements. Furthermore, while Champlain forged significant relationships with the Native Americans that he encountered, and included information about their culture, Bradford tended to gloss over such facts, concentrating instead on the lives of the settlers themselves.
Upon first glance, it is obvious that Champlain is determined to set out an accurate, fact-based account of his journey along the Atlantic coast. In an excerpt from Chapter VIII of The Voyages of Sieur de Champlain, he states, "The next day we doubled cape St. Louis (Plymouth Harbor), so named by the Sieur de Monts, a moderately low shore in latitude 42ยช 45'" (90). Indeed, much of Champlain's account is devoted to geographical details of his journey. The landscape itself plays a very prominent role, as he writes, "awe caught sight of some land which we took to be islands, but when nearer perceived that it was mainland, which continued to the north-north-west of us, and that it was the cape of a large bay more than eighteen to nineteen lea...