The origin and development of sweet-scented tobacco remains somewhat of a mystery, and we can only make conjectures as to what happened. Some authorities hold that the present day Maryland tobacco is descended from the sweet-scented of the Colonial days, while others believe it to be a descendant of Oronoco. It seems quite possible that there was only one variety of _Nicotiana tabacum_ when John Rolfe first began his experiments, and there is reason to believe that this first tobacco was sweet-scented. The name Oronoco probably came after the name sweet-scented had already been established. It also appears that sweet-scented disappeared as soon as the soils along the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac rivers were exhausted. George Arents, probably the foremost authority on the history of tobacco, in referring to Rolfe's first shipment to England wrote, "So fragrant was the leaf that it almost at once began to be known as 'sweet-scented.'" Ralph Hamor, in 1614, declared that the colony grew tobacco equal to that of Trinidad, "sweet and pleasant." Jerome E. Brooks wrote that Rolfe's importation of tobacco seed resulted in the famous Virginia sweet-scented leaf. Once the cultivation began to spread into the areas away from the sandy loam along the James and York rivers, the type of soil necessary for the production of the sweet-scented, other varieties began to develop. In 1688 John Clayton wrote, "I have observed, that that which is called Pine-wood Land tho' it be a sandy soil, even the sweet-scented Tobacco that grows thereon, is large and porous, agreeable to Aranoko Tobacco; it smokes as coursely as Aranoko." While on his visit to Virginia, Clayton visited a poor, worn-out plantation along the James River. The owner, a widow, complained to him that her land would produce only four or five leaves of tobacco per plant. Clayton suggested that one of the bogs on the plantation be drained and planted in tobacco. A few years later Clayton happened to meet this same lady in London, selling the first crop of tobacco grown on the drained bog. She related to Clayton that the product was "so very large, that it was suspected to be of the Aranoko kind...."