2 INTRODUCTION. 



fish, dress and tend it. " l The Indians used to put two or three fishes 

 (generally ale wives, though sometimes shad or horseshoe crabs 

 were used) into every corn-hill. 2 The Pilgrims were obliged to watch 

 their corn by night, to keep the wolves from the fish, until it was 

 rotten, which was in about fourteen days. 8 And in 1621 " the 

 governor requested Massasoit to exchange some of their corn, for 

 seed, with ours, that we might judge which best agreed with the 

 soil where we live." The natives were acquainted with the advan- 

 tage of selecting the finest ears of corn for seed, and taught the 

 settlers to do the same. 4 They possessed varieties adapted to 

 the warmer or colder parts of the country. One field cultivated by 

 them in the present State of Maine is said to have comprised 

 three hundred acres. Their practice of planting corn when the 

 leaves of the white oak were as large as a mouse's ear has come 

 down to our own time. 



The savages were accustomed to burn the country over twice 

 a year, viz., in spring and fall: otherwise it would have been 

 grown over with underwood, and impassable. By this means the 

 trees grew here and there, as in parks. 6 



In the spring of 1621, which followed that first winter " of awful 

 sublimity of suffering," the Pilgrims at Plymouth had made con- 

 siderable progress in gardening as early as the first of March ; 

 the season, most fortunately, being a forward one. They planted 

 twenty acres of Indian corn, and six acres of barle} T and pease, 

 manuring the ground with herrings, or rather shads, after the 

 Indian manner. The corn did well, the barle}* was "indifferent 

 good, but our pease not worth the gathering, for we feared they were 

 too late sown. They came up very well, and blossomed ; but the sun 

 parched them in the blossom." 6 As early as 1632 there might 

 have been seen in one township a hundred acres together set with 

 these fish, every acre taking a thousand of them ; and an acre 

 thus dressed would produce as much corn as three without. 7 



" Here are grapes," wrote Edward Winslow in 1621, " white and 

 red, and very sweet and strong also ; strawberries, gooseberries, 

 raspberries, &c. ; plums of three sorts, white, black, and red, being 

 almost as good as a damson ; abundance of roses, white, red, and 

 damask, single, but very sweet indeed." 8 



1 Young's Chron. of the Pilgrinj/s, p. 230. Morton's New Eng. Canaan, Bk. I. Chap. XVHL 

 * Ibid., p. 231. Young's Chronicles, p. 230. 



Ibid., p. 371. 7 Morton's N. E. Canaan, Bk. II. Chap. VII. 



Report of the Maes. Board of Agriculture, 1853, p. 5. 8 Young's Chronicles, p. 234. 



