water forceth its passage over great and steep rocks that lie cross over the whole stream, they are made impassable any higher for any sort of vessels, which is the great disadvantage of those that dwell in the upper, or more inland, parts of the country. As touching the said rivers, the one is called Connecticut, running north and south, and distant near an hundred miles from the most easterly point of Cape Cod; first discovered by the Dutch, [and] called by them the Fresh River. About fifty or sixty miles from the entrance of which, are seated the towns of Middleton, Wethersfield, Hartford, and Windsor, and Springfield about twenty-five miles above them; and between thirty and forty miles above them are seated Hadly, Northampton, and Hatfield; above which were Deerefield, and Northfield or Squakhegue]], [which] 'for sometime were1 ruined by the Indians, but since planted again; all which are accommodated with interval land of an excellent soil, and otherwise very desirable, were it not for the distance of a market, and difficulty of transportation. The other is called Hudson's river, running on the same point with the former, so as a west line from Boston at the mouth of Charles river, falls directly thereupon, near Fort Albany, (lately, while the Dutch had the possession, called Fort of Aurania,) near which are very great falls, where the channel has a precipice down near fifty foot in a right descent; but how much higher that great river comes from within the continent, is as yet unknown. At or near the mouth, it is above a league over, and carries his breadth with suitable proportion thereunto, about a hundred and fifty miles; and it is a very stately river upon all accounts, but for the inconveniency of sundry falls much interrupting the passage of the stream, beyond the said place of Fort Albany. From the mouth of this, called Hudson's river, to the mouth of the former, called Connecticut, runneth a great channel between the mainland and that called Long Island, in length making about a hundred miles; in some parts thereof carrying a considerable breadth withall. Other rivers there are besides the aforementioned, not inconsiderable: as that Squakhet

1 Originally written, for the present are.—н.

called Pequod river, in the bottom of Narraganset Bay, where it empties itself into the main ocean, making a very goodly haven, near unto which is seated the town called New London; in nothing but the name imitating the glory of the mother city, *that mirror* and famous mart of Europe, if not of the world, unless in the advantage of the stately harbor, and vicinity of the ocean. Twelve miles from which, upon the banks of the same river, is seated another town, called Norwich. But the stream of this water being issued in so small and short a course, it is not mentioned as one of the great rivers of the country; the breadth, a little above the first town, not being in any degree proportionable to that it is below.

CHAP. IV.

Of the temperature of the air and nature of the climate.

The climate of New England lies in the middle, between the frigid and torrid zones, the extremes on either hand; and therefore may be supposed to be in the most desirable place of a temperate air, for the advantage both of wholesome and delightful living, falling into the same latitude with Italy and France: some provinces in both which countries in former times being taken for the most desirable in the whole universe; yet, by reason of some occult and secret accident, is this country known by long experience to partake a little too much of the two extremes of heat and cold, proper to the two opposite regions on either hand, in those seasons of the year when those qualities rise to be most prevailing. Both the sea coast and the continent are indifferently mixt of mountainous champaign lands, the air thereby becoming more salubrious, by far, than the next adjoining province of Virginia to the south, which consisteth generally both of a lower and richer soil; it being found by experience that the vapors drawn out of the earth in the levels and moister parts thereof by the directer beams of the sun, and not purified by the ventilating of the air, as is usually seen in the higher and more hilly countries, it useth to make the places more unwholesome and obnox

ious to diseases, which the more hilly countries are freed from. The greatest inconvenience of the country in respect of the temperature of the air, either in summer or winter, is judged to arise from the inequality thereof, which yet is more discerned in Virginia, a country more land locked and that lies not so open to the sea, the reason of which is hard to be rendered. The heat in the summer and cold in the winter seldom are observed to continue in the same degree, but are very subject to sudden alterations, from whence many epidemical distempers are known to proceed ofttimes. Those hotter countries situate in the torrid zone between the two tropics, by the ancient philosophers, upon a mistake of ignorance or want of experience, determined to be not habitable, were they not continually fanned by those they call the trade winds, that continually follow the sun, the fiery and sulphureous vapors exhaled by the sun beams so directly falling upon the earth, would else suffocate the inhabitants: for want of which ventilation here, sometimes the summer seasons are found more unwholesome and difficult to bear; though generally the temperature of the air is, since the planting of the country by the English nation, found more moderate by experience, and much more suitable for the constitution of the inhabitants; however, the complaint of the people that dwell therein is for the most part more, for being annoyed with the heat of the summer than cold of the winter-against the extremity whereof ways may be found for men to secure themselves more easily than from the extremity of the heat, especially in such who are not as yet well naturalized and inured to the climate. The frost here useth to visit the inhabitants so early in the winter, and ordinarily tarries so long before it takes its leave in the spring, that the difficulty of subsistence is much increased thereby: for it commonly begins to take possession of the earth about the middle of November, forbidding the husbandman to meddle therewith any more, till the middle or end of March, not being willing till that time to resign up its possession, or the hold it hath taken for near two foot be

low the surface of the earth. However, the purity of the air makes amends for the sharpness of the cold, being much cleansed in its lower rooms, or chambers, which are thoroughly purged thereby, and so is the climate preserved from those rotting diseases of coughs and consumptions, which other countries, where heat and moisture prevails, are more incident unto. By reason of this long continued and extreme sharpness of the cold through the whole country, the seven months of the summer's increase are usually devoured by the five lean and barren ones of the winter following, as was shewed to Pharoah in his dream; so as if some stranger should chance to be there in the end of every winter, he might be ready to think, that all the cattle here were the issue of Pharoah's lean kine, that had been transported hither; the cattle at that time of the year much resembling the wild deer in Greenland, when the bridegroom of the earth begins to smile upon them, after the long, cold, and dark night of winter begins to take his leave. The unsearchable providence of Almighty God is the more to be admired, that doth so richly clothe the earth of the country in so short a space, that hath been so long before dismantled of all the former ornaments and glory, which every summer is wont to clothe her withall; for although some times it be the middle of May before the fruit trees be blossomed out, or the fallowed ground of the fields be willing to receive its portion of the seed to be sown or planted therein; yet within three months after, the harvest of English grain will be fit for the hand of the reaper, and the fruits ready for the hand of the gatherer, at the usual appointed season thereof: whence we may conclude, that the salubriousness of the air in this country depends much upon the winter's frost; and the earth, as to its fruitfulness, is as much beholding to the summer's heat, and influence of celestial planets.

CHAP. V.

Of the fertility of the soil, with the commodities and other advantages of New England.

SINCE the charter of the gospel was first opened to the world, the privileges of which only remain with the church, it need not be wondered at if the patents of eternal prosperity should be altered, lest they should prove, as often they have done before, through man's corruption, the hindrance of piety and devotion; nor is it to be expected that the professed followers of the Lamb should all of them in this age hear of a land flowing with milk and honey, when their fore-runners were made to fly into the wilderness from the dragon, of which sort, in a literal sense, is this place, whither Providence hath occasionally brought the inhabitants of New England; yet may they say, that God hath not been a wilderness nor a land of darkness unto them therein, it being a country capable, with good improvement, to maintain a nation of people, after once it comes to be subdued. As for the soil, it is for the general more mountainous and hilly than otherwise, and in many places very rocky and full of stones; yet intermingled with many plains and valleys, some of which are sandy and inclinable to barrenness, yea, most of them are uch; especially those that abound with pitch pines, and there are many of that sort; as likewise many swamps or boggy places, full of small bushes and under-wood. But here and there are many rich and fruitful spots of land, such as they call interval land, in levels and champaign ground, without trees or stones, near the banks of great rivers, that oftentimes are overflown by the channels of water that run besides them, which is supposed to enrich the soil that is so watered: the fatness of the earth, that is by the rains and melting of the snow washed from the surface of the earth in the higher parts of the country, being by these floods cast upon those levels, that lie lowest by the sides of these greater streams. In many such places their land hath