A curious English traveler by the name of David Ingram claims to have hiked America in the 16th Century.

In his travels which came to light in the 1589 book by Robert Hakluyt, known as “The Principall Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation,” seemed both then and now largely farcical. Ingram claimed to have been at the French Colony at Fort Caroline in the 1560’s with John Hawkins, an English privateer and cousin of Frances Drake who would sack the Spanish settlement of St Augustine in 1586.

Ingram claimed many years later he set out from Veracruz Mexico through the North American lands to find the colony again, perhaps hoping to settle there but found it abandoned. As we know, the French Huguenots that had settled Fort Caroline were slaughtered by the Spanish in 1565.   

Earlier this year, BBC History Extra had a podcast that piqued my interest in Ingram. It’s highly recommended.