He told them of a strange accident that had happened.  The parents of two children who had died were moved by some phantasy to revisit their dead carcasses, “whose benumbed bodies reflected to the eyes of the beholders such delightful countenances as though they had regained their vital spirits.”  This miracle drew a great part of the King’s people to behold them, nearly all of whom died shortly afterward.  These people spoke the language of Powhatan.  Smith explored the bays, isles, and islets, searching for harbors and places of habitation.  He was a born explorer and geographer, as his remarkable map of Virginia sufficiently testifies.  The company was much tossed about in the rough waves of the bay, and had great difficulty in procuring drinking-water.  They entered the Wighcocomoco, on the east side, where the natives first threatened and then received them with songs, dancing, and mirth.  A point on the mainland where they found a pond of fresh water they named “Poynt Ployer in honer of the most honorable house of Monsay, in Britaine, that in an extreme extremitie once relieved our Captain.”  This reference to the Earl of Ployer, who was kind to Smith in his youth, is only an instance of the care with which he edited these narratives of his own exploits, which were nominally written by his companions.

The explorers were now assailed with violent storms, and at last took refuge for two days on some uninhabited islands, which by reason of the ill weather and the hurly-burly of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain, they called “Limbo.”  Repairing their torn sails with their shirts, they sailed for the mainland on the east, and ran into a river called Cuskarawook (perhaps the present Annomessie), where the inhabitants received them with showers of arrows, ascending the trees and shooting at them.  The next day a crowd came dancing to the shore, making friendly signs, but Smith, suspecting villainy, discharged his muskets into them.  Landing toward evening, the explorers found many baskets and much blood, but no savages.  The following day, savages to the number, the account wildly says, of two or three thousand, came to visit them, and were very friendly.  These tribes Smith calls the Sarapinagh, Nause, Arseek, and Nantaquak, and says they are the best merchants of that coast.  They told him of a great nation, called the Massawomeks, of whom he set out in search, passing by the Limbo, and coasting the west side of Chesapeake Bay.  The people on the east side he describes as of small stature.

They anchored at night at a place called Richard’s Cliffs, north of the Pawtuxet, and from thence went on till they reached the first river navigable for ships, which they named the Bolus, and which by its position on Smith’s map may be the Severn or the Patapsco.