There are also some elm, some black walnut tree[s], and some ash: [from] ash and elm they make soap ashes. If the trees be very great, the ashes will be good, and melt to hard lumps, but if they be small, it will be but powder, and not so good as the other.

Of walnuts there [are] 2 or 3 kinds; there is a kind of wood we called cypress, because both the wood, the fruit, and leaf did most resemble it, and of those trees there are some near[ly] three fathoms about at the foot, very straight, and 50, 60, or 80 [feet] without a branch.

By the dwelling of the savages are some great mulberry trees, and in some parts of the country, they are found growing naturally in pretty groves. There was an assay made to make silk, and surely the worms prospered excellent[ly] well, till the master workman fell sick. During which time they were eaten [by] rats.

In some parts were found some chestnuts, whose wild fruit equalize the best in France, Spain, Germany or Italy.

Plums there are of three sorts. The red and white are like our hedge plums, but the other which they call putchamins [persimmons], grow as high as a palmetto: the fruit is like a medlar; it is first green, then yellow, and red when it is ripe: if it be not ripe, it will draw a man's mouth awry, with much torment, but when it is ripe, it is as delicious as an apricot.

They have cherries, and those are much like a damson, but [because of] their tastes and color we called them cherries. We saw some few crabs [wild apples], but [they were] very small and bitter.

Of vines [there is] great abundance in many parts that climb the tops of the highest trees in some places, but these bear but few grapes. Except by the rivers and savage habitations, where they are not overshadowed from the sun, they are covered with fruit, though never pruned nor manured. Of those hedge grapes we made near twenty gallons of wine, which was like our French British wine, but certainly they would prove good were they well manured.

There is another sort of grape near as great as a cherry, this they call messamins; they be fat, and the juice thick. Neither doth the taste so well please when they are made in wine.

They have a small fruit growing on little trees, husked like a chestnut, but the fruit most like a very small acorn. This they call chechinquamins [chinquapins], which they esteem a great dainty. They have a berry much like our gooseberry, in greatness, color, and taste; those they call rawcomens, and do eat them raw or boiled.

[On] these natural fruits they live a great part of the year, which they use in this manner; the walnuts, chestnuts, acorns, and chechinquamins are dried to keep. When they need walnuts they break them between two stones, yet some part of the shells will cleave to the fruit. Then do they dry them again upon a mat over a hurdle [grating]. After they put it into a mortar of wood, and beat it very small: that done they mix it with water, that the shells may sink to the bottom. This water will be colored as milk, which they call pawcohiccora, and keep it for their use.

The fruit like medlars [which] they call putchamins they cast upon hurdles on a mat, and preserve them as prunes. [From[ their chestnuts and chechinquamins boiled, they make both broth and bread for their chief men, or at their greatest feasts.

Besides those fruit trees, there is a white poplar, and another tree like unto it, that yieldeth a very clear and an odoriferous gum like turpentine, which some call balsam. There are also cedars ans sassafras trees. They also yield gums in a small proportion of themselves. We tried conclusions to extract it out of the wood, but nature afford more than our arts.

In the watery valleys groweth a berry which they call ocoughtanamnis [pokeberry?] very much like unto capers. These they dry in summer. When they eat them they boil them near half a day; for otherwise they differ not much from poison. Mattoum [wild rye] groweth as our bents. The seed is not much unlike to rye, though much smaller. This they use for a dainty bread buttered with deer suet.

During summer there are either strawberries, which riped in April, or mulberries which ripen in May and June. Raspises [raspberries], hurts [hurtleberries]; or a fruit that the inhabitants call maracocks [squash], which is a pleasant, wholesome fruit much like a lemon.

Many herbs in the spring are commonly dispersed throughout the woods, good for broths and salads, as violets, purslane, sorrel, &c. Besides many we used whose names we know not.

The chief root they have for food is called tockawhoughe [tuckahoe]. It groweth like a flag in marshes. In one day a savage will gather sufficient for a week. These roots are much of the greatness and taste of potatoes. They use to cover a great many of them with oak leaves and fern, and then cover all with earth in the manner of a coal pit; over it, on each side, they continue a great fire 24 hours before they dare eat it. Raw it is no better than poison, and being roasted, except it be tender and the heat abated, or sliced and dried in the sun, mixed with sorrel and meal or such like, it will prickle and torment the throat extremely, and yet in summer they use this ordinarily for bread.

They have another root which they call wighsacan; as th' other feedeth the body, so this cureth their hurts and diseases. It is a small root which they bruise and apply to the wound. Puccoon [bloodroot] is a small root that groweth in the mountains, which being dried and beat in powder turneth red. And this they use for swellings, aches, anointing their joints, painting their heads and garments. They account it very precious, and of much worth. Musquaspen is a root of the bigness of a finger, and as red as blood. In drying, it will wither almost to nothing, This they use to paint their mats, targets, and such like.

There is also pellitory of Spain, sassafras, and divers other simples, which the apothecaries gathered, and commended to be good, and medicinable.

In the low marshes grow plots of onions, containing an acre of ground or more in many places; but they are small, not past the bigness of the top of one's thumb.

Of beasts the chief are deer, nothing differing from ours. In the deserts toward the heads of the rivers, there are many, but amongst the rivers few.

There is a beast they call aroughcun [raccoon], much like a badger, but useth to live [in] trees as squirrels do. Their squirrels some are near as great as our smallest sort of wild rabbits, some blackish or black and white, but the most are gray.

A small beast they have they call assapanick, but we call them flying squirrels, because spreading their legs, and so stretching the largeness of their skins, that they have been seen to fly 30 or 40 yards. An opossum hath a head like a swine, and a tail like a rat, and is of the bigness of a cat. Under her belly she hath a bag, wherein she lodgeth, carrieth, and suckleth her young. A mussascus [muskrat] is a beast of the form and nature of our water rats, but many of them smell exceeding strongly of musk. their heads [are] no bigger than our conies, and few of them [are] to be found.

Their bears are very little in comparison [to] those of Muscovy and Tartary. The beaver is as big as an ordinary water dog, but his legs [are] exceeding short. His forefeet [are] like a dog's, his hinder feet like a swan's. His tail [is] somewhat like the form of a racquet, bare without hair, which to eat the savages esteem a great [delicacy]. They have many otters, which as the beavers they take with snares, and esteem the skins great ornaments; and of all those beasts they use to feed when they catch them.

An utchunquoyes is like a wild cat. Their foxes are like our silver haired conies, of a small proportion, and not smelling like those in England. Their dogs of that country are like their wolves, and cannot bark but howl; and the wolves not much bigger than our English foxes. Martens, polecats, weasels, and minks we know they have, because we have seen many of their skins, though very seldom any of them alive.

But one thing is strange, that we could never perceive their vermin destroy our hens, eggs, nor chickens, nor do any hurt, nor their flies nor serpents [to be] any way pernicious, where[as] in the south[ern] parts of America they are always dangerous, and often deadly.

Of birds the eagle is the greatest devourer. Hawks there be of divers sorts, as our falconers called them: sparrow hawks, lannerets, goshawks, falcons and ospreys, but they all prey most upon fish. Their partridges are little bigger than our quail. Wild turkeys are as big as our tame. There are woosels or blackbirds with red shoulders, thrushes and divers sorts of small birds, some red, some blue, scarce so big as a wren, but few in summer. In winter there are great plenty of swans, cranes gray and white with black wings, herones, geese, brants, ducks, widgeon, dotterel, oxeyes, parrots, and pigeons. [There was] of all these sorts great abundance, and some other strange kinds, to us unknown by name. But in summer [there were] not any, or a very few to be seen.

Of fish we were best acquainted with sturgeon, grampus, porpoise, seals [and] stingrays whose tails are very dangerous. Brit, mullets, white salmon, trout, sole, plaice, herring, conyfish, rockfish, eels, lampreys, catfish, shad, perch of three sorts, crabs, shrimps, crayfish, oysters, cockles, and mussles. But the most strange fish is a small one, so like the picture of St. George his dragon as possibl[y] can be, except his legs and wings; and the toadfish, which will swell till it be like to burst, when it cometh into the air.

Concerning the entrails of the earth, little can be said for certainty. There wanted good refiners; for those that took [it] upon them]selves] t have skill this way, took up the washings from the mountains, and some moskered [crumbled] shining stones and spangles which the waters brought down, flattering themseves in their own vain conceits to have been supposed what they were not, by the means of that ore, if it proved as their arts and judgments expected. Only this is certain, that many regions lying in the same latitude, afford mines very rich of divers natures. The crust also of these rocks would easily persuade a man to believe there are other mines than iron and steel, if there were but means and men of experience that knew the mine from spar.