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 such; 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

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 Scommon§ 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.'

*

a

Theophemus |

'Here is a blank of two or three lines in the MS.-H.