Ill 



and a systematic course of tillage and fallow. We learn also 

 ■what the chmate must have been then ; for he says, " they plant 

 their corn in May and gather it in September." 



Sir Walter Raleigh in his first voyage to North Carolina found 

 '• pulse, grain and roots," probably beans, corn and sweet po- 

 tatoes, as the common food of the people. 



Narvez, the Spanish Governor of Florida, 1628, says, " the 

 savages conducted the Spaniards to their huts, where they re- 

 freshed them with maize."* 



" We travelled [in Florida] more than a hundred leagues of 

 country, and continually found settled domicils and great abun- 

 dance of maize and beans. "f 



" North of Cape Ann is a great bay, where we found some 

 habitations and corn-fields. The country of the Massachusetts is 

 the Paradice of all those parts, for here we saAv many iles 

 planted with corn. The sea-coast, as you pass, shows you all 

 along large corn-fields. 



" The greatest labor the natives take is in planting their corn. 

 They make a hole in the ground with a stick, and into it they put 

 four grains of wheat and two of beans. These holes are about 

 four feet from each other. Every stalke of their corn commonly 

 beareth two ears, some three, seldom four, many but one, some 

 none. The stalke being green hath a sweet juice in it, somewhat 

 like a sugar cane, which is the cause that when they gather their 

 corn green they suck the stalkes ; for, as we gather green pease, 

 so doe they their corn, which excelleth the old."| 



The well-known passage in Morton reads thus : — " On the 

 seventeenth of November, 1620, a party of the Plymouth pilgrims 

 made an expedition to look out for a place of habitation. They 

 could find neither the Indians nor their dwelHngs ; but at length 

 lighted on a good quantity of cleer ground near to a pond of fresh 

 water [in Truro], where formerly the Indians had planted corn. 

 Proceeding further they found new stubble, where corn had been 

 planted the same year, and heaps of sand newly paddled, which 

 they digged up, and found in them divers fair Indian baskets 

 filled with corn, some whereof was in ears, fair and good, of divers 

 colors, which seemed to them a very goodly sight, having seen 

 none before. "§ 



Various other authorities, to quote whom would be a labor of 

 love, were their testimony needed, — as Robertson, Montesquiu, 

 Colden, Meycn and others, confirm the foregoing statements, 

 and bring us to the conclusion thus expressed by Lankaster, — 



* Discovery and Natural History of Florida, 

 t Narrative of De Vaca, 1555, p. 102. 



I Geucrall Historic of Virginie ; Capt. John Smith's first voyage to New Eng- 

 land, IG 14, p. 28. 



^ Morton's Memorial, Ed. Davis, p. 40. 



