After their stay near the Potomac the parade turned back from whence it had come. The destination, now, was Powhatan's favorite spot on the York River, where that great chief was waiting to settle the fate of Captain John Smith.
When at length Smith was brought before Powhatan, he was received with all the formal pomp and state known to the savage court. A long consultation was held by the council there assembled.
Captain Smith knew what the decision was when two large stones were brought in by the warriors. His end was not yet, however, for Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, according to Smith, saved the day by thrusting herself between him and the up-raised club.
By the time Captain Smith reached Jamestown again nearly seven weeks had elapsed since his capture. Though his tour of the Tidewater country had been under humiliating conditions he had gathered by observation and from the Indians a large amount of useful knowledge.
How did the Northern Neck look to Captain John Smith on his first visit there?
Just like the rest of the Chesapeake Bay country--"all over-growne with trees and ... being a plaine wildernes as God first made it."
The size of the trees impressed him most, and the lack of undergrowth beneath them.
"So lofty and erect," he wrote, "were many of these trees and so great their diameter that their trunks afforded plank twenty yards in length and two and a half feet square."
Freedom from undergrowth he found was due to the annual burnings of the Indians in their efforts to capture whole herds of deer by surrounding them with a belt of fire. These firings made no impressions upon the giant trees.
The trees were so far apart, Smith says, "... that a man may gallop a horse amongst these woods any waie, but where the creeks or Rivers shall hinder." (Other early writers say that a coach could have been driven through the trees, and a person could be seen in the forest at a mile and a half.)
It was winter when Captain Smith first saw the Neck therefore he had a view unobstructed by foliage of the great tree trunks and spacious forest aisles, "bespred" with brown pine needles and ornamented with green vines and scarlet turkey berries.
Since it is impossible to travel far in the Neck without coming upon some stream of water, many of John Smith's forest vistas must have ended with a glimpse of a river or frozen pond. He wrote of the many "sweete and christall springs" that flowed through the woods on their way to the sea.