Like Smith, Strachey also noted the abundance of cornfields and
the manner in which the bays, coves and creeks conjoined to
"make that place very pleasant to inhabit." "... Kecoughtan ...
is an ample and faire Country indeed," he concluded. "We have
more quotes for Kecoughtan than for any other place in early
Virginia -- and every one of them talks about it as a great
place to live," says E. Randolph Turner III, head of the
Tidewater office of the state Department of Historic Resources,
who has compiled a comprehensive list of the colonists'
descriptions. Mapmakers pounced on the village, too, making
Kecoughtan one of the most often recorded native landmarks of
the early Colonial period. It shows up prominently on Smith's
famous map of 1608, which locates it between the east bank of
the Hampton River and Old Point Comfort in what is now the
vicinity of the Hampton Veterans Administration Medical Center.
Even more explicit, Turner says, is a map that Spanish
ambassador to England Pedro de Zuniga may have trace