NORTH AMERICA. 
the tops or extremities of the branches they became 
trifid, haftated, and laftly lanceolate : it is a delicate 
plant, of a yellowilh lively green, and would be aa 
ornament in a garden. 
Sat off again to Cambelton, continuing yet up 
the North Weft about fixty miles ; crofted over 
this branch, and foon after crofted the Roanoke, 
and then refted a few days at Mr. Lucas’s, a worthy 
old gentleman, a planter on Meherren river. Ob- 
ferved {trolling over his fences and (tables, a very 
fingular and ufefui fpecies of the Gourd (Cucurbita 
lagenaria) ; its neck or handle is above two feet in 
length, and not above an inch in diameter $ its belly 
round, which would contain about a pint ^ it makes 
excellent ladles, funnels, &c. At a little diftance 
from Mr. Lucas’s, at the head of a lwamp near the 
high road, I obferved a very curious fpecies of 
Prinos, which grows feven or eight feet high, the 
leaves broad, lanceolate, lliarply ferrated, nervous, 
and of a deep green colour j but its linking beauty 
confifts in profufe clufters of fruit, collected about 
the cafes or origin of the laft fpring’s {hoots ; thefe 
berries are nearly round, about the fize of middling 
grapes, of a fine clear fcarlet colour, covered or in- 
veiled with an incarnate mift or nebute. 
Being now arrived on the South border of Vir- 
ginia, and the hoary frigid feafon fir advanced, I 
{hall pafs as fpeedily as poftible from hence to 
Pennlylvania, my native country ; fince thofe cul- 
tivated regions of Virginia and Maryland, through 
which I defign to travel, have been over and over 
explored, and defcribed by very able men in every 
branch of natural hiftory. 
After leaving Meherren, I foon arrived at 
Alexandria in Virginia, a fine city on the Weft 
banks 
