e BOARD OJ AGRICULTURE. 



the only plant they worked upon, the women managing all the 

 rest. 



This very brief sketch of the agriculture of the Indians 

 would not be complete, without an allusion to their mode of 

 storing their winter supply. Large holes were dug in the 

 earth, and the sides carefully lined with bark. This was also 

 the work of the women. The corn and the beans, after being 

 dried in the sun, or on racks or flakes over a fire, were thrown 

 into these holes, and then covered up level with the surface of 

 the ground. They were thus preserved, if necessary, through 

 the winter. These excavated barns were carefully concealed, 

 by the women, from their lazy husbands and sons, lest they 

 should discover and eat up all ; yet, with all the care they could 

 take, the hogs of the colonists often imhinged their barn-doors, 

 and helped themselves to the golden treasure. History says, 

 that one of these Indian barns was discovered by the Pilgrims, 

 at a time when their store of grain was so reduced as to con- 

 tain but five kernels of corn to each individual. 



In addition to this provision for winter, they sometimes made 

 large boxes of wicker-work, or bags or sacks of hemp, which 

 were filled and kept in the wigwam, for the more immediate 

 wants of the family. Gi*ass they had no occasion to cut, 

 though it grew in great abundance along the marshes and the 

 rivers, and in places which had been cleared for cultivation. 

 It was of a coarse quality, yet it made the only hay used by 

 the colonists for some time after the settlement. 



To the rude implements used by the Indians, the colonists 

 •added the plough. We may well imagine the surprise of the 

 natives at the first sight of a plough. They could not under- 

 stand so complicated a machine. They wanted to see it work, 

 and when it tore up more ground in a day than they, with their 

 clam-shells, could scrape up in a month, and they saw the col- 

 ter and the share to be of iron, they told the ploughman if he 

 was not the devil himself, he was very much like him. 



The first sight of a ship, it will be remembered, had excited 

 their wonder even to a greater extent. To them it was a 

 floating island; its masts were nothing but trees; its sails 

 were clouds ; its discharge of guns was thunder and lightning ; 



