After John Smith had had enough of Virginia’s gold freaks and they of him, he sailed north on a reconnaissance mission and in 1616 published an account of what he found. He raved about the cornucopia of stone and timber for building and fish to eat, as well as the “moderate” climate. (He visited in spring and summer.) “Who can but approve this a most excellent place, both for health and fertility? And of all of the four parts of the world that I have yet seen not inhabited”—not counting as inhabitants the natives he’d mentioned earlier in this very account—“I would rather live here than
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