previous next

[349]

For beasts, there are some bears, and they say some lions also; for they have been seen at Cape Ann. Also here are several sorts of deer, some whereof bring three or four young ones at once, which is not ordinary in England; also wolves, foxes, beavers, martens, great wildcats, and a great beast called a molke,1 as big as an ox. I have seen the skins of all these beasts since I came to this plantation, excepting lions. Also here are great store of squirrels,—some greater, and some smaller and lesser: there are some of the lesser sort, they tell me, that by a certain skin will fly from tree to tree,2 though they stand far distant.


Of the water of New England.

New England hath water enough, both salt and fresh. The greatest sea in the world, the Atlantic Sea, runs all along the coast thereof. There are abundance of islands along the shore, some full of wood and mast, to feed swine, and others clear of wood, and fruitful, to bear corn. Also we have store of excellent harbors for ships, as at Cape Ann, and at Masathulets Bay, and at Salem, and at many other places; and they are the better, because for strangers there is a very difficult and dangerous passage into them; but unto such as are well acquainted with them they are easy and safe enough. The abundance of sea-fish are almost beyond believing; and sure I should scarce have believed it, except I had seen it with mine own eyes. I saw great store of whales, and grampuses, and such abundance of mackerels,

1 Probably the moose. The lions were imaginary.

2 The flying-squirrel, which has a membrane connecting the fore and hind paws on each side.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
New England (United States) (2)
Cape Ann (Massachusetts, United States) (2)
Salem (Massachusetts, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: