HERBALS OF THE NEW WORLD 133 



courage to experimente it as I have doen." There is another 

 vivid gUmpse of the use of sassafras as a pomander when the 

 pestilence was rife in Seville. " Many did use to carrie a peece 

 of the Roote of the wood with them to smell to it continually, 

 as to a Pomander. For with his smell so acceptable it did 

 rectifie the infected ayre : I caried with mee a peece a greate 

 tyme, and to my seemyng I founde greate profite in it. For 

 with it and with the chewing of the rinde of lemmon in the 

 mornyng and in the daye tyme for to preserve health it hath a 

 greate strength and property. It seemeth to mee that I was 

 delivered by the healpe of God from the fyre in the whiche we 

 that were Phisitions went in, blessed be our Lorde God that 

 delivered us from so great euill and gave us this moste excellente 

 Tree called Sassafras, which hath so greate vertues, and doth 

 suche maruellous effectes as we have spoken of and more that 

 the tyme will shewe us, which is the discouerer of all thinges." 



It is a far cry from Monardes's book to that by " John 

 Josselyn Gentleman," written nearly a hundred years later. 

 Instead of the atmosphere of the El Dorado of the Spanish Main, 

 of the galleons, of the tropical sun and plants of the West Indies, 

 we find ourselves in the good company of the first settlers in 

 New England, the Spanish Empire being only a memory of the 

 past. Just fifty years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers 

 on American soil, New England's Rarities discovered was printed 

 at the Green Dragon in St. Paul's Churchyard, London, and the 

 book is of peculiar interest, for it contains the first pubhshed 

 lists of Enghsh plants that would thrive in America. There 

 is a certain pathos in the efforts of the new settlers to produce 

 in the New Country (which then took two months to reach) 

 something that would remind them of the famihar English 

 gardens of their old homes, and no one with a gardener's heart 

 can read it without sympathy. The book was written by one 

 John Josselyn, who undertook the then perilous voyage in order 

 to stay with his only brother, who lived a hundred leagues from 



