Spaniards sailed into the Bay and explored some of the region in the sixteenth century.
European traditions tell of adventurers of other nations who may have visited this region.
Late in the year 1607, Captain John Smith traveled from Jamestown as far north as the Potomac when, as a captive of Opechancanough, he was paraded before the Indian tribes of the Tidewater region. He may have been the first white man to make a comprehensive tour of the Northern Neck of Virginia.
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
When John Smith heard about the New World across the seas it sounded good to him—it was the sort of adventure that he had been waiting for all of his life.
He had been born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1579. Even as a small lad John Smith had been "set upon brave adventures." Tradition says that he sold his books and satchel and was preparing to run away to sea when he was stopped by the death of his father.
He was soon apprenticed to a merchant but he hated the counting-house. He longed to be free and go to sea. When he was about fifteen he could no longer stand being caged so he ran away. After a number of adventures he became a soldier in the Netherlands.
Some time later he went home on a visit to Lincolnshire, where he "lived a great deal in society." He soon tired of this way of life and retired to a wooded pasture where he built himself a shelter of boughs and became a hermit.
In the peace and solitude of the pasture he studied Machiavelli's Arte of Warre and the writings of Marcus Aurelius. He exercised with a good horse, a lance and a ring, and lived mostly on venison, which he took without worrying too much over the game laws. His other wants were supplied by a servant, his only contact with the world.
Because of his unusual mode of life news of John Smith traveled around the countryside but it did not worry him because "he provoked the wonder of the peasantry."