44 
Fifh caft up on the fhore. In the year 1668. there was a 
great mortality of Eels in Cafco Bay, thither reforted at 
the fame time an infinite number of Gripes, infomuch 
that being fhot by the Inhabitants, they fed their Hogs 
with them for fome weeks; at other times you fhall fel- 
dom fee above two or three in a dozen miles travelling. 
The Quill Feathers in their Wings make excellent Text 
Pens, and the Feathers of their Tail are highly efteemed 
by the Indians for their Arrows, they will not ling in 
flying; a Gripes Tail is worth a Beavers Skin, up in the 
Country. 
Prosped, I. c. The first spoken of by Wood — and perhaps, also, what Josselyn 
names last — may be the common or ring-tailed eagle, now known to be the 
young of the golden eagle. The second of Wood, and first of our author, is 
without doubt, the bald eagle; the (so to say) tyrannical habits of which bird 
are sufficiently well known, at least in the vivid pages of Wilson. See the 
Voyages, p. 96; where we learn also that "hawkes there are of several kinds; as 
goshawks, falcons, laniers, sparrow-hawkes, and a little black hawke highly 
prized by the Indians, who wear them on their heads, and is accounted of worth 
sufficient to ransom a sagamour. They are so strangely couragious and hardie 
that nothing flyeth in the air that they will not bind with. I have seen them 
tower so high, that they have been so small that scarcely could they be taken by 
the eye" (p. 95-6). Wood makes like mention of this little black hawk (New- 
Eng. Prospect, I. c); and R. Williams (Key into the Language of the Indians of 
N. E., in Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 220) calls it " sachim, a little bird about the big- 
ness of a swallow, or less; to which the Indians give that name, because of its 
sachem or prince-like courage and command over greater birds : that a man shall 
often see this small bird pursue and vanquish and put to flight the crow and 
other birds far bigger than itself." This was our well-known king-bird ; and 
Josselyn, on the same page, tells us of " a small ash-colour bird that is shaped 
like a hawke, with talons and beak, that falleth upon crowes; mounting up into 
the air after them, and will beat them till they make them cry : " which was, per- 
haps, the king-bird's half-cousin, as Wilson calls him, — the purple-martin. 
