Exploration

John Cabot, a man of Italian birth employed by the Eng-
lish, was, in all probability, the first white man to see
Maryland as he sailed along the eastern shore of Worcester
County in 1498. Twenty-six years later Giovanni da Ver-
razzano, who was another Italian working for French inter-
ests, passed the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Half a century
later the Bay was explored by Pedro Menendez Marques, the
governor of Spanish Florida. In 1603 Captain Bartholomew
Gilbert made a more careful exploration.

The intrepid Captain John Smith, who saw many other
parts of North America, began in 1608 to carry out the in-
structions of the London Virginia Company to "find some
spring which runs the contrary way toward the East India
sea." With fourteen companions in "an open barge of two
tunnes burden," Smith started up the Chesapeake. Every
inlet and bay "fit for harbours and habitations" was en-
tered, and all the islands were inspected. The results were
incorporated in what Smith called "A Map of Virginia,"
published in England in 1612. Reprinted many times
shortly thereafter, the map shows that Smith's voyagers
paid close attention to the Eastern Shore, examined the
Potomac carefully, but had a hazy idea of the western head
of the Bay and only a generalized notion of the lower West-
ern Shore. In 1670 Augustine Herman, a cartographer from
the New Netherlands Colony, completed a more detailed
map of Maryland. As compensation Lord Baltimore granted
him 5,000 acres of land in what is now Cecil County.

Aborigines

To John Smith, also, we owe our first knowledge of
the pre-European settlers on the land of what was later
Maryland. Smith's account is bewildering with Indian
names; one soon recognizes the adaptations of these same
queer-sounding names in present-day Maryland. The Vir-
ginia explorer speaks of Yingoteagues, Assateagues, Ma-
rumscos, Annamesses, Wiccocomicos, Nanticokes, Conoys,
Trasquakins, Choptanks, Monoponsons, Matapeakes, Ozin-
ies, Tockwoghes, Nattwas, Susquehannocks, Conestogas,
Piscattoways, Chopticos, Mattawomans, Patuxents, Aqua-
socks, Secowocomocos, and others. Despite this multiplicity
of names, all these Indians were of Algonquin stock, save
for the Susquehannocks at the headwaters of the Bay and
the Anacostans on territory around present-day Washing-
ton. Invading tribes, who made forays from the North and
at times lived on Maryland territory, were of the Five

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