ties are subordinate to a general uniformity, in which New England gives to all her children the birthright of a fair prospect of health and longevity. The configuration of the surface forbids the stagnation of masses of water, and the tides of the neighboring ocean, the snow on the hills, and the winds which the rapid changes of temperature keep in motion, are perpetual restorers of a wholesome atmosphere. In the absence of marshes diffusing noxious miasmata, intermittent fevers rarely occur.1 Among the fatal maladies pulmonary consumption numbers most victims. Diseases of the nervous system are next in frequency. Malignant epidemic fevers, especially of the typhoid type, are of occasional occurrence. The partial returns in Massachusetts of 80,995 deaths, 1852-1855. in four years, showed 4,482 persons to have died at an age exceeding eighty. Of 20,798 whose deaths were registered in a recent year, ten were more than a hundred years old.

1855.

In less than two centuries and a half a different climate and regimen on this continent have produced in the descendants of the English some remarkable physiological changes. The normal type of the Englishman at home exhibits a full habit, a moist skin, curly hair, a sanguine temperament. In the transplanted race the form is oftener slender, the skin dry, the hair straight, the temperament bilious or nervous.

The agricultural season is short. Winter lasts through nearly half the year. In Massachusetts, the mean temperature of the eight cold months is less than

Agriculture.

1 But they were not uncommon in early times. (Holmes, Boylston Prize Dissertation on Indigenous Intermittent Fever, pp. 11 – 25.)

forty degrees. That of the four warm months is nearly seventy. In storms the aspect of winter is austere. In fair weather it is brilliant, with its radiance of snow and ice reflecting sun or stars through a transparent atmosphere. No verdure but that of evergreens resists the annual cold, and an unmelted mass of snow often covers the ground for months. The late and sudden bursting forth of the spring severely tasks the laborer, while the rapid growth which follows surprises the traveller from a lower latitude. In years of average vernal temperature in Massachusetts, the ground is ready for the plough by the first week in April. The average blossoming of the apple is on the 16th of May. Grass is cut for drying between the middle of June and the middle of July. Indian corn is ripe in September. By the first week of November the last fruits of the year are gathered in.1 Some of the aspects of nature are of rare beauty. No other country presents a more gorgeous appearance of the sky than that of the New-England summer sunset; none, a more brilliant painting of the forests than that with which the sudden maturity of the foliage transfigures the landscape of autumn. No air is more delicious than that of the warm but bracing October and November noons of the Indian summer of New England.

Soil.

The soil generally is not fertile. There is a wide beach

of sand along the coast; in the interior, rocks

and gravel, with occasional veins of clay, cover a large part of the surface. The cultivation of more than two centuries has greatly improved the quality of those portions of the land which have convenient communication with markets. But most of the natural fruitfulness

1 Here too, however, differences occasioned by the inequalities of surface come into the account. In the opening of spring, the valley of the Connecticut is, on an average, a fortnight in advance of the highlands on its borders;

and snows cover the low lands as well as the hills of Berkshire weeks before it is seen, and after it has disappeared, in the meadows about Massachusetts Bay.

of the region was found in the valleys of the great rivers. The borders of the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Connecticut, and other streams, enriched in past ages and still reinvigorated by the deposits of the annual overflow, exhibit a fecundity in strong contrast with the stony hill-sides. Massachusetts is the least fruitful of the six States. Maine, skirted by a barren shore, contains inland the largest proportion of good arable soil. The wide grazing lands of New Hampshire and Vermont send immense herds and flocks to the markets of the sea-coast.

Minerals.

There is no part of the country which is not well provided with fresh water. Numerous springs bring it to the surface, and an ample supply is everywhere to be procured by digging a few feet. Mineral wealth is still but partially developed. A little copper is found, some lead, some graphite, and considerable quantities of iron and of manganese. There are beds of an inferior description of anthracite coal. In Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, there are ample quarries of slate, and limestone abounds in Rhode Island and Maine. The granite and sienite of Eastern Massachusetts, the white marble of the western mountain range, and the sandstone of the Connecticut valley, are valuable materials for building, while the serpentine of Vermont and the variegated marbles of Connecticut have come into use for architectural embellishment. Here and there are medicinal springs, generally of a chalybeate quality. Salt is only to be had from sea-water.

The native grasses of the upland were rank, but so little nutritious that the European planters found Botany. it better to fodder their cattle on the salt growth of the sea-marshes;1 and this consideration determined

1 "The natural upland grass of the country, commonly called Indian grass, poor fodder, perhaps not better, if so

is

good, as barley straw." (Hutchinson, History, I. 424, 426, 427.) The first settlers were deceived by its rankness,

2

The tough,

the site of some of the early settlements. fibrous bark of an indigenous plant, a species of dogbane, well served the purposes of hemp.1 The woods were so vast that the early writers describe them as covering the country. In fact, it was naturally all forestclad, excepting the bogs and salt-marshes, and the mountain tracts above the limit of trees. An abundance of the oak, hickory, walnut, ash, elm, maple, pine, spruce, chestnut, cedar, and other forest-trees, afforded supplies for fuel, tools, weapons, utensils, and building.3 The chestnut, hazlenut, beechnut, butternut, and shagbark made their contributions to the resources for winter supply. Wild cherries, mulberries, and plums increased the variety of the summer's diet. Wild berries, as the strawberry, the gooseberry, the raspberry, the blackberry, the whortleberry, the cranberry, grew in abundance in the meadow and champaign lands. Vines bearing grapes of tolerable flavor flourished along the streams.*

and thought of it much too favorably. (So Higginson, New England's Plantation, in Massachusetts Historical Collections, I. 118.)

1 "A kind or two of flax, wherewith they make nets, lines, and ropes, both small and great, very strong for their quantities." (Smith, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XXVI. 120.) "We found an excellent strong kind of flax and hemp." (Mourt, Relation, 22.)

2 "Though all the country be, as it were, a thick wood for the general, yet in divers places there is much ground cleared by the Indians." (Higginson, in Mass. Hist. Coll., I. 117.) "The country generally is . . . . . extremely overgrown with wood." (Josselyn, New England's Rarities, 3.), "An uncouth wilderness, full of timber." (Early Records of Charlestown.)

3 Of indigenous evergreens, the noble white-pine was the characteristic

A profu

tree of the region. There were two kinds of pitch-pine, four of fir or spruce, a juniper (commonly known as red cedar), a cypress (known as white cedar), and an arbor vitæ. Of deciduous trees, the principal were one kind of chestnut, nearly a dozen species of oak, one of beech, one of hornbeam, four of hickory, two of walnut, five of birch, four or five of poplar, one of larch, two of elm, three or four of ash and as many of maple, one of linden, one of the plane-tree (attaining a great size on the alluvial banks of rivers), one of tupelo or sour-gum tree, one of holly along the southern border, and, the most showy in blossom, the flowering dog-wood and the tulip-tree. The two last-named, with the hickories, the tupelo, and the sassafras, were types totally new to the colonists.

4 There were three kinds of grapes, one of them now considered worthy of

sion of flowering shrubs and of aquatic, forest, and field flowers, the wild rose, the richly perfumed water-lily, the rhododendron, the azalea, the anemone, the kalmia or mountain-laurel, the cardinal-flower, the fringed gentian, the aster, the golden-rod, brought their tribute to the pomp of the year. Among plants especially esteemed for their medicinal qualities were the lobelia, the sarsaparilla, the ginseng, and the sassafras. Cloven branches of resinous wood afforded a substitute for candles.

Fishes.

The sea and the rivers swarmed with fishes of kinds the most useful to man. The cod has been an important article of trade since New-England commerce began, as have the mackerel and herring in only a less degree. The salmon, the bass, the shad, the halibut, the trout, the eel, the cusk, the smelt, the tautog, the swordfish, the haddock, the pickerel, and many other inhabitants of the fresh and salt water, of inferior consideration with the epicure, still abound in their respective seaOf shell-fish, lobsters and several kinds of clams multiplied on the beaches and among the rocks of the seacoast, and it is only of late years that the oyster has ceased to be common at the mouths of the southern New-England rivers. The unprolific whale, hunted for its oil, has been driven from its ancient haunts about New England to distant seas, till it seems to be drawing near to extermination.

sons.

The summer brings a variety of birds prized for food. The most abundant is the pigeon, which former

Birds.

ly came in such numbers as to fill the air for miles.1 Different wild species of the goose and duck resort to the sea-shore in the colder months for fish and aquatic

cultivation; two species of strawberry; several of raspberry and of blackberry; one or two of haws; one or two of gooseberry; two of cranberry; two or three of whortleberry, and several species of blueberry.

1 “Pigeons, that come in multitudes every summer, almost like the quails that fell round the camp of Israel in the wilderness." (Hubbard, History, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XV. 25; Belknap, History of New Hampshire, III. 171.)