The Colour Of The Leaves
Was On One Side Whitish, And On The Other Green, And The Bark Of The
Trees Was Generally Of The Same Colour With The Leaves, Of A Pale
Green.
Some of these trees were sweet-scented, and reddish within
the bark, like sassafras, but redder.
Most of the trees and shrubs
had at this time either blossoms or berries on them. The blossoms
of the different sorts of trees were of several colours, as red,
white, yellow, etc., but mostly blue, and these generally smelt very
sweet and fragrant, as did some also of the rest. There were also
besides some plants, herbs, and tall flowers, some very small
flowers growing on the ground, that were sweet and beautiful, and,
for the most part, unlike any I had seen elsewhere.
There were but few land fowls. We saw none but eagles of the larger
sorts of birds, but five or six sorts of small birds. The biggest
sort of these were not bigger than larks, some no bigger than wrens,
all singing with great variety of fine shrill notes; and we saw some
of their nests with young ones in them. The water-fowls are ducks
(which had young ones now, this being the beginning of the spring in
these parts), curlews, galdens, crab-catchers, cormorants, gulls,
pelicans, and some water-fowl, such as I have not seen anywhere
besides.
The land animals that we saw here were only a sort of raccoons,
different from those of the West Indies, chiefly as to their legs,
for these have very short forelegs, but go jumping upon them as the
others do (and like them are very good meat), and a sort of guanos,
of the same shape and size with other guanos described, but
differing from them in three remarkable particulars; for these had a
larger and uglier head, and had no tail, and at the rump, instead of
the tail there, they had a stump of a tail, which appeared like
another head, but not really such, being without mouth or eyes; yet
this creature seemed by this means to have a head at each end, and,
which may be reckoned a fourth difference, the legs also seemed all
four of them to be fore-legs, being all alike in shape and length,
and seeming by the joints and bending to be made as if they were to
go indifferently either head or tail foremost.
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