Part 35

Called also “lusern, or luceret,” in the Voyages, p. 85; the loup-cervier of Sagard (Hist. Can., 1636, cit. Aud. and Bachm. Vivip. Quad. N. A., p. 136); of Dobbs’s Hudson’s Bay, &c.; but more commonly called gray cat, or lynx, in New England. Wood calls it “more dangerous to be met withal than any other creature; not fearing either dog or man. He useth to kill deer.... He hath likewise a device to get geese: for, being much of the colour of a goose, he will place himself close by the water; holding up his bob-tail, which is like a goose-neck. The geese, seeing this counterfeit goose, approach nigh to visit him; who, with a sudden jerk, apprehends his mistrustless prey. The English kill many of these, accounting them very good meat.”—New-Eng. Prospect, l. c. Audubon and Bachman (l. c., p. 14) give a similar good account of the flesh of the bay-lynx, or common wild-cat.

The raccoon is, or has been, an inhabitant of all North America (Godman, Nat. Hist., vol. i. p. 117), and was one of the first of our animals with which European naturalists became acquainted. Linnæus (Syst. Nat.) cites Conrad Gesner among those who have illustrated or mentioned it. Wood says they are “as good meat as a lamb;” and further, that, “in the moonshine night, they go to feed on clams at a low tide, by the seaside, where the English hunt them with their dogs.”—New-Eng. Prospect, l. c.

The author’s account of the Indian works in birch-bark and porcupine-quills is much fuller in his Voyages, p. 143.

Wood’s account is far better.—New-Eng. Prospect, chap. vii. See page 53 of the Rarities for mention of the musk quash.

See Voyages, pp. 88-91. Called moos-soog (rendered “great-ox; or, rather, red deer”) in R. Williams’s Key (Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 223): but this is rather the plural form of moos; as see the same, l. c. p. 222, and note, and Rasles’ Dict. Abnaki, in loco. It is called mongsöa by the Cree Indians; and, it should seem, mongsoos by the Indians of the neighborhood of Carlton House; as see Richardson, in Sabine’s Appendix to Franklin’s Narrative of a Journey to the Polar Sea, pp. 665-6. “The English,” says Wood, “have some thoughts of keeping him tame, and to accustome him to the yoke; which will be a great commodity.... There be not many of these in the Massachusetts Bay; but, forty miles to the north-east, there be great store of them.”—New-Eng. Prospect, l. c. On hunting the moose, as practised by the Indians, see Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 136.

Wood (N. E. Prospect, l. c.) has but two kinds of deer: of which the first is the moose; and the second, called “ordinary deer,” and, in the vocabulary of Indian words, ottuck (compare attuck or noonatch, deer,—R. Williams, l. c.; but atteyk, in the Cree dialect, signifies a small sort of rein-deer,—Richardson, in Appendix to Franklin’s Journey, p. 665; and it is observable that Rasles’ word for chevreuil is norke), is our American fallow-deer. R. Williams also appears to distinguish with clearness but two; which are, perhaps, the same as Wood’s. Josselyn, in this book, passes quite over the common, or fallow-deer: but, making up in the Voyages for the fallings-short of the Rarities, he goes, in the former, quite the other way; reckoning the roe, buck, red deer, rein-deer, elk, maurouse, and maccarib. What is further said of these animals, where he speaks more at large, makes it appear likely that the second, third, and fourth names, so far as they have any value, belong to a single kind,—the “ordinary deer” of Wood (whose description possibly helped Josselyn’s), or our fallow-deer; to which the “roe” is also to be referred: and the “elk” he himself explains as the moose. But, beside these two kinds, Josselyn has the merit of indicating, with some distinctness, one, or possibly two, others,—the maurouse and the maccarib. The maurouse—of which only the Voyages make mention—“is somewhat like a moose; but his horns are but small, and himself about the size of a stag. These are the deer that the flat-footed wolves hunt after.”—Voyages, p. 91. This is to be compared with the mauroos, rendered “cerf,” of Rasles’ Dict., l. c., p. 382; and, in such connection, is hardly referable to other than the caribou, or rein-deer,—a well-known inhabitant of the north-eastern parts of New England, and likely, therefore, to have come to the knowledge of our author; while there seems to be no testimony to its ever having occurred in Massachusetts and southward, where Wood and Williams made their observations. The last, or the maccarib, caribo, or pohano, of Josselyn, is described above; and, in the Voyages (p. 91), he only repeats that it “is not found, that ever I heard yet, but upon Cape Sable, near to the French plantations.” The “round” hoofs of the maccarib might lead us to take this for the caribou of Maine; the round track of which differs much from that of the fallow-deer. But the former is more likely to have been the American elk; so rare, it should seem, where it occurred, when our author wrote, and so little known in the New-England settlements, that his fancy, fed by darkling hearsay, could deck it with the honors of the “unicorn.”

“There are two or three kinds of them,—one a great yellow fox; another grey, who will climb up into trees. The black fox is of much esteem.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 82; where is also an account of the way of hunting foxes in New England. Wood has nothing special, but that some of the foxes “be black. Their furrs is of much esteem” (l. c.) Williams (l. c.) has “mishquashim, a red fox; pequawus, a gray fox. The Indians say they have black foxes, which they have often seen, but never could take any of them. They say they are manittooes.” Beside the common red fox, or mishquashim, we have in all these accounts—and also in Morell’s Nova Anglia, l. c., p. 129—mention of a black fox; which may have been the true black or silver fox, or, in part at least, the more common cross-fox (Aud. and Bachm., Viv. Quadr. N. A., p. 45); the pelt of which is also in high esteem. For Williams’s gray fox, see the next note. Josselyn’s climbing gray fox is perhaps the fisher (Mustela Canadensis, Schreb.), notwithstanding the color. According to Audubon (l. c., pp. 51, 310, 315), this is called the black fox in New England and the northern counties of New York. I have heard it more often called black cat in New Hampshire. But the true gray fox (Vulpes Virginianus) “has, to a certain degree, the power of climbing trees.” Newberry Zoology, Expl. for Pacific Railroad, vi, part 4, p. 40.

“A creature much like a fox, but smaller.”—Voyages, p. 83. Probably the gray fox, called pequawus by R. Williams (Vulpes Virginianus, Schreb.); which has not the rank smell of the red fox.—Aud. and Bachm., l. c., p. 168.

“They told me of a young lyon (not long before) kill’d at Piscataway by an Indian.”—Voyages, p. 23. Higginson says that lions “have been seen at Cape Anne.”—New-Eng. Plantation, l. c., p. 119. “Some affirm,” says Wood, “that they have seen a lion at Cape Anne.... Besides, Plimouth men” (that is, men of old Plymouth, it is likely) “have traded for lion-skins in former times. But sure it is that there be lions on that continent; for the Virginians saw an old lion in their plantation,” &c.—New-Eng. Prospect, l. c. The animal here spoken of may well have been the puma or cougar, or American lion.

“The rabbits be much like ours in England. The hares be some of them white, and a yard long. These two harmless creatures are glad to shelter themselves from the harmful foxes in hollow trees; having a hole at the entrance no bigger than they can creep in at.”—Wood, New-Eng. Prospect, l. c. Wood’s rabbit and Josselyn’s hare, so far as the summer coloring goes, appear to be the gray rabbit (Lepus sylvaticus, Aud. and Bachm., l. c. p. 173); and the white hare of Wood—as also, probably, the hare, “milk-white in winter,” of Josselyn—is doubtless the northern hare (Lepus Americanus, Erxl., Aud. and Bachm., l. c., p. 93).

The Voyages mention, beside the quadrupeds above named, also the skunk (ségankoo of Rasles’ Dict., l. c.); the musquash (mooskooéssoo of Rasles, l. c.), for which see also p. 53 of this; otter; marten, “as ours are in England, but blacker;” sable, “much of the size of a mattrise, perfect black, but ... I never saw but two of them in eight years’ space;” the squirrel, “three sorts,—the mouse-squirril, the gray squirril, and the flying-squirril (called by the Indian assapanick).” Our author’s mouse-squirrel, which he describes, is the ground or striped squirrel: probably the “anequus, a little coloured squirrel” of R. Williams, l. c.; and the anikoosess (rendered suisse) of Rasles, l. c. The mattrise of our author is, according to him, “a creature whose head and fore-parts is shaped somewhat like a lyon’s; not altogether so big as a house-cat. They are innumerable up in the countrey, and are esteemed good furr.”—Voyages, p. 87. The sable is compared with the mattrise, at least in size; and the name is perhaps comparable with mattegooéssoo of Rasles, l. c.; but this is rendered lièvre. Wood adds to this list of our quadrupeds, mistakenly, the ferret; and R. Williams, the “ockquutchaunnug,—a wild beast of a reddish hair, about the bigness of a pig, and rooting like a pig;” which seems to answer, in name as well as habits, to our woodchuck, or ground-hog.

The author’s attempt here at a general catalogue of the fishes, mollusks, &c., of the North-Atlantic Ocean, affords but a poor make-shift for such a list as we might fairly have expected from him of the species known to the early fishermen in the waters and seas of New England; and the account in his Voyages (pp. 104-15) is again an improvement on the present, and is confined to the inhabitants of our waters. The present editor has little to offer in elucidation of the list; which indeed, in good part, appears sufficiently intelligible. Compare Wood, New-Eng. Prospect, chap. x.

“Like a herrin, but has a bigger bellie; therefore called an alewife.”—Voyages, p. 107. The other names, alize and allow, are doubtless corruptions of the French alose, also in use among London fishmongers to designate shad from certain waters.—Rees’s Cyc., in loco. The old Latin word alosa, supposed to have been always applied to the fish just mentioned, is adopted by Cuvier for the genus which includes our shad, alewife, and menhaden.

The tunny is so called on the coast of New England.—Storer’s Report on the Fishes of Mass., p. 48.

It is, notwithstanding, set down in the author’s list of fishes “that are to be seen and catch’d in the sea and fresh waters in New England.”—Voyages, p. 113. And compare Storer, Synops. (Mem. Am. Acad., N. S., vol. ii.), p. 300.

See Voyages, p. 108. The first settlers esteemed the bass above most other fish. See Higginson’s New-England’s Plantation (Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 120). Wood calls it (New-Eng. Prospect, chap. ix.) “one of the best fish in the country; and though men are soon wearied with other fish, yet are they never with bass. The Indians,” he says, eat lobsters, “when they can get no bass.” The head was especially prized; as see Wood, and also Roger Williams’s Key (Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 224). The fish is our striped bass (Labrax lineatus, Cuv.; Storer’s Report on Fishes of Mass., p. 7). Our author, at p. 37, again mentions it as one of the eight fishes which “the Indians have in greatest request.”

See p. 96 as to the blue-fish, or horse-mackerel; and Storer, l. c., p. 57.

The bonito of our fishermen is the skipjack.—Storer, l. c., p. 49.

See p. 95.

See p. 96. Josselyn’s character of the fish as food is confirmed by Dr. Storer, l. c., p. 69.

The clam is one of the eight fishes mentioned at p. 37 as most prized by the Indians. “Sickishuog (clams). This is a sweet kind of shell-fish, which all Indians generally over the country, winter and summer, delight in; and, at low water, the women dig for them. This fish, and the natural liquor of it, they boil; and it makes their broth and their nasaump (which is a kind of thickened broth) and their bread seasonable and savoury, instead of salt.”—Williams’s Key, &c., l. c. p. 224. “These fishes be in great plenty in most parts of the country: which is a great commodity for the feeding of swine, both in winter and summer; for, being once used to those places, they will repair to them as duly, every ebb, as if they were driven to them by keepers.”—Wood, N. Eng. Prospect, l. c. The mollusk thus approved is the common clam (Mya arenaria, L.); but the poquauhock, or quahog (Venus mercenaria, L.), “which the Indians wade deep and dive for” (R. Williams, l. c., p. 224), was also eaten by them, and the black part of the shell used for making their suckauhock, or black money. Wood speaks also of “clams as big as a penny white loaf, which are great dainties amongst the natives” (N. E. Prospect, l. c.); doubtless the giant clam (Mactra solidissima, Chemn.) of Gould (Report on Invertebr. of Mass., p. 51), which is still esteemed as food.

See p. 36; by which it appears that the author has in view the meteauhock of the Indians; “the periwinkle, of which they make their wompam, or white money, of half the value of their suckauhock, or black money” (R. Williams, l. c.): supposed to be Buccinum undatum, L. (Gould, l. c., p. 305); and possibly, also, one or two other allied shell-fish.

“Cod-fish in these seas” (that is, Massachusetts Bay) “are larger than in Newfoundland,—six or seven making a quintal; whereas they have fifteen to the same weight.”—New-Eng. Prospect, l. c. Compare Storer, l. c., p. 121. Josselyn has an entertaining account of the sea-fishery, in his Voyages, pp. 210-13.

See further of eels, and the author’s several ways of cooking them, in his Voyages, p. 111. At p. 37 of the Rarities, eels are mentioned among the fishes most prized by the Indians. “These eels be not of so luscious a taste as they be in England, neither are they so aguish; but are both wholesome for the body, and delightful for the taste.”—Wood, New-Eng. Prospect, chap. ix.

See p. 37, where it is said to be one of the fishes which “the Indians have in greatest request.”—“Poponaumsuog” of R. Williams, l. c., p. 225. He says, “Some call them frost-fish, from their coming up from the sea into fresh brooks in times of frost and snow.”

“Grampoise; Fr. grandpoisson;” corrupted grampus.—Webster, Dict.

“These hollibut be little set by while bass is in season.”—Wood, l. c., chap. ix.

“The sea-hare is as big as grampus, or herrin-hog; and as white as a sheet. There hath been of them in Black-Point Harbour, and some way up the river; but we could never take any of them. Several have shot sluggs at them, but lost their labour.”—Voyages, p. 105. The Lepus marinus of the old writers is a naked mollusk of the Mediterranean; Laplysia depilans, L.: but Josselyn’s was a very different animal.