been known to be sown or planted full forty years together, without any considerable abatement of the crop, never failing of thirty or forty bushels per acre: but for the generality of the soil, it is of a lighter sort of earth, whose fruitfulness is more beholding to the influences of the heavens, [and the] advantages of the seasonable skill and industry of the husbandmen, than [to] the strength of its own temper. Such as came hither first upon discovery, chanced to be here in the first part of the summer, when the earth was only adorned with its best attire of herbs and flowers, flourishing with all such early fruits which weather-beaten travellers are wont to refresh themselves with the beholding of; as strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, cherries, and whorts; as they observed that first landed about Martha's Vineyard: whence they promised themselves and their successors a very flourishing country, as they did that first landed upon the coast of Florida. But as it is proverbially said of some parts of England, they do not every where abound with mines, though there be lead in Mendon Hills: so neither did, or doth, every place abound with those flourishing and alluring aspects, nor is the country at all times found of the verdant hue, though many places do naturally abound with some of those berries, as other places with grapes, which gave great hopes of fruitful vineyards in after time: but as yet either skill is wanting to cultivate and order the roots of those wild vines, and reduce them to a pleasant sweetness, or time is not yet to be spared to look after the culture of such fruits as rather tend to the benè, or melius esse, of a place, than to the bare esse, and subsistence thereof: each season of the year, so fast, as it were, treading upon the heels of that which went before, that little time is to be found spare, for that tillage which is not of absolute necessity, but for pleasure and delight. Yet are all sorts of grain found to grow pretty naturally there, that are wont to be sown in the spring season, (the cold ofttimes proving so extreme as it kills all that is committed to the earth before winter, especially in the Massachusetts colony.) That which the land produceth upon the surface

thereof, is that upon which the inhabitants have their dependence for the most certain part of their wealth: for that which is hid in the bowels thereof, the present generation either wanting leisure or ability to ransack so deep under ground: nor have they that could spare time, and have more skill than their neighbors in the nature of minerals, met with any thing that promiseth better than iron, with which the country every where abounds; most of their common rocks being observed to be of such a Skind of grit-as those in the northern parts, as Acady and Nova Francia, are judged to incline as much to copper, as some that have been on that coast have reported. In many places are supposed to be medicinal waters, whither, upon the first discovery of such springs, the halt, maimed, and diseased did resort frequently, in hope they might leave their crutches upon the trees adjoining, as the Papists have used to do at the chapel of the Lady of Loretto; but upon the very best experience that hath been known, it is conceived that all is but some springs passing through iron mines, and have gotten some tincture of a chalybiat quality, the pouring down many draughts of which is said by some, that have made experiment, to have had the same effect with those kind of pills, that are given to remove the obstructions of the spleen, and may be useful, if the quantity they use to drink down do not more harm by the coldness of the potion, than the quality of such chymical matters do them good. As for medicinal herbs, Gerard and Johnson, as well as Theophrastus of old, might have made herbals here as well as in any other particular country; the same trees, plants and *shrubs,* roots, herbs and fruits being found either naturally growing here that are known to do in the northern countries of the like climate of Europe, and upon trial have been found as effectual in their operation, and do thrive as well when transplanted; as the oak, walnut, ash, elm, maple, hornbeam, abundance of pine, spruce, etc.; also a kind of white cedar in many swamps; and such herbs as are common in England-elecampane, angelica, gentian, St. John's wort, agrimony, betony, and the like.1

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As for living creatures-as the natives were not known to bring any along with them, so neither do they keep any (but small dogs,) according to the custom of more civil nations so neither were here any found but wild deer, and in some places skunks, wild cats, and in some places porcupines, a sort of conies, and hares, moose, bears, wolves, and now and then a straggling ounce, like the tigers in the West Indies. Yet is the place capable to breed and nourish all sorts of serviceable beasts and cattle, which other parts of the world have subdued and tamed, to their use.

The like may be said of feathered fowl, especially such as live upon the water, which abound as much here as in any other place. The bird of the greatest rarity in this place, if not in the world, is a small one, not exceeding the bigness of a great bee, called Humbirds, from the noise they make with their wings, while they are flying from one flower to another to suck out the honey; but never set their feet down. Turkies also, and pigeons, (that come in multitudes every summer, almost like the quails that fell round the camp of Israel in the wilderness,) partridges, quails, and all birds of prey, by nature's instinct, or by conduct of Divine Providence, have found the way into these ends of the earth, as well as into any other part of the habitable world: nor did Hircinia Sylva go beyond what is found here for wild creatures, it used of old to be haunted with, which since is turned into a fruitful and pleasant land; as this also may be in time. Nor is the sea less propitious to the mariner and fisherman, than the earth and dry land is all over the country to the diligent husbandman-the bays, rivers, creeks, [and] havens, abounding with all sorts of fish, that the coast of Greenland and Norway, or the narrow seas are stored with; which, as it was the first improvement that ever was made of this coast, so it is still the most certain and stable commodity the country affordeth; although provisions of all sorts here are plentiful, and as cheap as in most parts of Europe, great quantities of which are daily transported from hence for the relief of many other places of the English in the West Indies.

CHAP. VI.

Of the disposition of the natives of America in New England, with the conjectures about their passage hither.

WHEN God first made man, he gave him a command, with a secret promise, to increase and multiply, and replenish the earth; of which it is no question but America was intended as a part, although probably it was long before any of his posterity found the way thither, which in the shortest cut they can be supposed to take from Eden or Armenia, could not be less than a journey of eight or ten thousand miles. But in what age or by what means, or by whose conduct they found their passage over hither, is not easy, if possible, in this age, to find unless the astrologers can find it in the stars, or that it can be gathered from the motion [of] the celestial bodies, that lighted them hither; none of the inhabitants being ever known to have kept any annals or records of things done in fore past times. Nor is it less to be wondered at, that any of the posterity of Adam should lie hid so long from the knowledge of the rest of the world. It will be impertinent to trouble ourselves with [the] uncertain guesses of all those that have busied themselves to make enquiry into this matter. Mr. Mede's opinion about the passage of the natives into this remote region carries the greatest probability of truth with it; of whose conjecture it may be said, in a sense as sometimes of Achitothopell's counsel in those days, that it was as the oracle of God. His conceit is, that when the devil was put out of his throne in the other parts of the world, and that the mouth of all his oracles was stopped in Europe, Asia, and Africa, he seduced a company of silly wretches to follow his conduct into this unknown part of the world, where he might lie hid and not be disturbed in the idolatrous and abominable, or rather diabolical service he expected from those his followers; for here are no footsteps of any religion before the English came, but merely diabolical. Stories were delivered by the people of Mexico, the seat of

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Montezuma's Empire, when the Spaniards first seized it, which seem to intimate the passage of their ancestors from some other remote place about nine hundred years before it was possessed by them, Anno 1498 or 1500. But which way those people should come is hard to say, for the streights of Magellan, we may think, are too near one of the frigid zones to give opportunity of such a passage; although it be certain that on the south continent, called Nova Guinea, there are people inhabiting, as Sir Francis Drake relates in his voyage through the Pacific Sea, towards China and the East Indies: others therefore more probably conceive, that they might find some passage out of Tartaria by the streights of Anian beyond California. And that which gives not a little countenance to this opinion is, that the natives upon this continent do in their manners more resemble the Savage Tartar, then any other people whatsoever; though positively to affirm any thing in a matter so uncertain is not convenient.

If any observation be made of their manners and dispositions, it is easier to say from what nations they did not, than from whom they did derive their original. Doubtless their conjecture who fancy them to be descended from the ten tribes of the Israelites, carried captive by Salamaneser and Esarhaddon, hath the least shew of reason of any other, there being no footsteps to be observed of their propinquity to them more than to any other of the tribes of the earth, either as to their language or manners. No instance can be given of any nation in the world that hath so far degenerated from the purity of their original tongue in 1500 or 2000 years, but that there may be observed some rudiments of the ancient language, as may be seen in the Greek and Latin tongues, though they are now utterly lost as to the purity of them; yet it is easy to trace either of them amongst the nations since descended from those that naturally spoke the language; but here can no such thing be observed among the natives of America. Besides, here are found no footsteps of the idolatry or rites of any religious worship the people had