In the Northern Neck there are still so many reminders of these remarkable people that it is not hard to imagine them as they might have been in their habitat several centuries ago--John Mottrom sailing into the Coan in his brightly-colored shallop; the Mottrom children playing their medieval games in the shadow of the primeval woods; Ursula twirling the venison roast on its hempen string before the fire; Hanna Neale passing the witchcraft test; young Jack Lee dashing down the forest aisles on his spirited mount; George Mason pulling the arrows from the "poor people"; Moore Fauntleroy measuring off his thirty arm's lengths of rhoanoke for the waiting Accopatough; King Carter rumbling down his avenue in his coach and six; Mary Ball on her dapple gray; James Monroe and John Marshall walking down the Parson's Lane with school books and muskets; Nelly Madison singing to her new baby; young George Washington riding down to see "Miss Betsy" on a fruitless mission, and little Robert E. Lee saying good-bye to the cherubs in the nursery fireplace.... _INDIANS AND EARLY EXPLORERS_ What men first knew this land between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers? It is believed that Indians lived along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay's tributaries three thousand years ago. The Vikings may have entered the Bay and explored the nearby streams and lands in the eleventh century. Cabot, an Italian seaman under commission from King Henry VII of England, may have entered the Chesapeake at the end of the fifteenth century. 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.