60 AUTHENTIC HISTOKY 



find, some persons have liad so little wit, and so mucli malice, as to report 

 my death ; and, to mend the matter, dead a Jesuit too. One might have 

 reasonably hoped that this distance, like death, would have been a pro- 

 tection against spite and envy; and, indeed, absence being a kind of 

 death, ought alike to secure the name of the absent, as the dead; because 

 they are equally unable, as such, to defend themselves: but they that 

 intend mischief do not use to follow good rules to effect it. However, to 

 the great sorrow and shame of the inventors, I am still alive, and no 

 Jesuit; and I thank God, very well. And, withoat injustice to the 

 authors of this, I may venture to infer that they that wilfully and falsely 

 report, would have been glad it had been so. But I perceive many frivo- 

 lous and idle stories have been invented since my departure from Enrj- 

 land ; which, perhaps, at this time are no more alive than I am dead. 



"But, if I have been unkindly used by some I left behind me, I found 

 love and respect enough where I came; an universal kind welcome, every 

 sort in their way. For here are some of several nations, as well as divers 

 judgments: nor were the natives wanting in this; for their kings, queens, 

 and great men, both visited and presented me; to whom I made suitable 

 returns, &c. 



"For the Province^ the general condition of it, take as followeth: 



I. "The country itself, its soil, air, water, seasons and produce, both 

 natural and artificial, is not to be des})ised. The land containeth divers 

 sorts of earth, as sand, yellow and black, poor and rich: also, gravel, both 

 loamy and dusty; and, in some places, a fast fat earth like our best 

 vales in England; especially by inland brooks and rivers: God, in his 

 wisdom, having ordered it so, that the advantages of the country are 

 divided; the back lands being generally three to one richer than those 

 that lie by navigable rivers. We have much of another soil ; and that is 

 a black hazel-mould upon a stony or rocky bottom. 



II. "The air is sweet and clear, the heavens serene, like the south 

 parts of Eratice, rarely overcast; and as the woods come, by numbers of 

 people, to be more cleared, that itself will refine. 



III. "The waters are generally good; for the, rivers and brooks have 

 mostly gravel and stony bottoms; and in number hardly credible. We 

 have also mineral waters, that operate in the same manner with Barnet 

 and North Hall, not two miles from PJLiladel])hia. 



IV. "For the seasons of the year having, by God's goodness, now 

 lived over the coldest and hottest that the oldest liver in the 2')rovince 

 can remember, I can say something to an Enr/lish understanding: 



"First, Of the Fall — for then I came in — I found it, from the 2-ith of 

 October to the beginning of December, as we have it usually in England, 

 in September, or rather like an English mild Spring. From December 

 to the beginning of the month called March, we had sharp, frosty weather; 



