“Every object that struck their senses, as they sailed up the Chesapeake, was well calculated to awaken hope in the minds of the adventurers. They were almost enclosed in one of the most spacious bays in the world; whilst the rich verdure, with which a genial and early spring had clad the forest, ascending from the edge of the shore to the summits of the hills, presented a prospect at once regular and magnificent. It was a sort of vast amphitheatre, the limits of which were the horizon; and when to the real beauty of the landscape, be added the ardent spirit of adventure, which delights in the marvellous, and kindles and dilates itself by the enthusiasm of fancy; there is little cause for our surprise at the glowing descriptions of the first settlers, who represented it as a kind of earthly paradise or elisium.”--_Burk’s History of Virginia._ * * * * * There is a simplicity and an occasional richness in the original descriptions of Captain Smith, which cannot fail to be relished by the reader. * * * * * “There is but one entrance by sea into this country, and that is at the mouth of a very goodly bay eighteen or twenty miles broad. The cape at the south is Cape Henry, in honor of our most noble prince. The land white hilly sands, like unto the Downes, and all along the shores great plentie of pines and firres. “The north cape is called Cape Charles, in honor of the worthy Duke of Yorke; the isles before it, Smith’s Isles, by the name of the discoverer. Within is a country that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places knowne, for large and pleasant navigable rivers; heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation. Here are mountains, hills, plains, valleys, rivers, and brookes, all running most pleasantly into a faire bay, compassed but for the mouth with fruitful and delightsome land. “The mountains are of divers natures; for at the head of the bay the rockes are of a composition like millstones. Some of marble, &c. And many pieces like christall, we found, as throwne downe by water from those mountains. These waters wash from the rockes such glistering tinctures, that the ground in some places seemeth as guilded, where both the rockes and the earth are so splendent to behold, _that better judgements than ours might have beene persuaded they contained more than probabilities_. The vesture of the earth in most places doth manifestly prove the nature of the soyle to be lusty and very rich. “The country is not mountainous, nor yet low; but such pleasant plaines, hils, and fertile valleyes, one prettily crossing another, and watered so conveniently with fresh brooks and springs, no less commodious and delightsome. By the rivers are many plaine marishes. Other plaines there are few, but only where the savages inhabit; but all overgrowne with trees and weeds, being a plaine wilderness as God first made it.