a reddish sand or rock, but in the low flat lands, and along the rivers, and even in the sides of the mountains for an hundred or two hundred paces up there is often clay ground. I have been on hills here, as high as a church, to examine the soil, and have found it to be clay. In this ground there appears to be a singular strength and capacity for bearing a crop, for a farmer here told me that he had clean wheat off one and the same piece of land, eleven years successively without ever breaking it up, or letting it lie fallow. The butter here is clean and yellow as in Holland. Through this land runs an excellent river, about 500 or 600 paces wide. This river comes out of the Mahakas Country, about four miles † north of us. There it flows between two high rocky banks, and falls from a height equal to that of a Church, with such a noise that we can sometimes hear it with us. In the beginning of June twelve of us took a ride to see it. When we came there we saw not only the river falling with such a noise that we could hardly hear one another, but the water boiling and dashing with such force in still weather, that it was all the time as if it were raining; and the trees on the hills there (which are as high as Schoorler Duyn §) had their leaves all the time wet exactly as if it rained. The water is as clear as crystal, and as fresh as milk. I and another with me saw there, in clear sunshine, when there was not a cloud in the sky, as we stood above upon the rocks, directly opposite where the river falls in the great abyss, the half of a rainbow, or a quarter of a circle, of the same colour with the rainbow in the sky. And when we had gone about ten or twelve rods farther downwards from the fall, along the river, we saw a complete rainbow, or half a circle appearing clearly in the water just the same as if it had been in the clouds, and this is always to be seen by those who go there. In this river is great plenty of several kinds of fish,-pike, eels, perch, lampreys, suckers, cat fish, sun fish, shad, bass, &c. In the spring, in May, the perch are so plenty, that one man with a hook and line will catch in one hour as many as ten or twelve can eat. My boys have caught in less than

Brandt Peelen, of Utrecht, who lived on "Brandt Peelen's " or Castle Island, a little below Fort Orange. See De Vries, ante p. 91, and Van der Donck, in I. N. Y. H. S. Coll. (Second Series), page 159.

+ Twelve English miles.

The Cohoes Falls.

§ A "dune," or sand hill, on the coast of North Holland, near the village of Schoorl, where Domine Megapolensis had lived.

an hour fifty, each a foot long. They have a three pronged instrument with which they fish, and draw up frequently two or three perch at once. There is also in the river a great plenty of sturgeon, which we Christians do not make use of, but the Indians eat them greedily. In this river,

too, are very beautiful islands, containing ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and seventy morgens of land. The soil is very good, but the worst of it is, that by the melting of the snow, or heavy rains, the river is very likely to overflow and cover that low land. This river ebbs and flows as far as this place, although it is thirty-six miles † inland from the sea.

What relates to the climate of this country, and the seasons of the year, is this, that here the summers are pretty hot, so that for the most of the time we are obliged to go in our bare shirts, and the winters are very cold. The summer continues until All Saints' Day; but then begins the winter, in the same manner as it commonly does in December, and it freezes so hard in one night that the ice will bear a man. Even the river itself, in still weather and no strong current running, is frozen with a hard crust in one night, so that on the second day we can go over it. And this freezing continues commonly three months; for although we are situated here in 42 degrees of latitude, yet it always freezes so. But sometimes there come warm and pleasant days. The thaw however does not continue, but it freezes again until March. Then, commonly, the river first begins to open, but seldom in February. We have the greatest cold from the north west, as in Holland from the North East. The wind here is very seldom East, but almost always South, South West, North West, and North.

We

Our shortest winter days have nine hours sun; in the Summer, our longest days are about fifteen hours. lie so far west of Holland that I judge you are about four hours before us, so that when it is six o'clock in the morning with us it is ten with you, and when it is noon with us, it is four o'clock in the afternoon with you.

The inhabitants of this country are of two kinds; 1st, Christians certainly so called: 2d, Indians. Of the Christians I shall say nothing; my design is to speak of the Indians only. These among us are again of two kinds : 1st,

*A morgen is about two acres.

A Dutch mile is about three English miles.

the Mahakinbas, or, as they call themselves, Kajingahaga; 2d, the Mahakans, otherwise called Agotzagena. These two nations have different languages, which have no affinity with each other, as the Dutch and Latin. These people formerly carried on a great war against each other, but since the Mahakanders were subdued by the Mahakobaas, a peace has subsisted between them, and the conquered are obliged to bring a yearly contribution to the others. We live among both these kinds of Indians; and, coming to us from their country, or we going to them, they do us every act of friendship. The principal nation of all the savages and Indians hereabouts with which we are connected, are the Mahakuaas, † who have laid all the other Indians near us under contribution. This nation has a very heavy language, and I find great difficulty in learning it, so as to speak and preach to them fluently. There is no Christian. here who understands the language thoroughly; those who have lived here long can hold a kind of conversation just sufficient to carry on trade with them, but they do not understand the idiom of the language. I am making a vocabulary of the Mahakuaa language, and when I am among them I ask them how things are called; but as they are very stupid, I cannot sometimes get an explanation of what I want. Besides what I have just mentioned, one will tell me a word in the infinitive mood, another in the indicative; one in the first, another in the second person; one in the present, another in the praeter perfect tense. So I stand oftentimes and look, but do not know how to put it down. And as they have their declensions and conjugations, so they have their augments like the Greeks. Thus I am as if I was distracted, and frequently cannot tell what to do, and there is no person to set me right; I must do all the studying myself in order to become in time an Indian grammarian. When I first observed that they pronounced their words so differently, I asked the commissary of the company what it meaned. He answered me that he did not know, but imagined they changed their Language every two or three years; I told him in reply that it could never be that a whole nation should so generally change their language; and, though he has been connected with them here these twenty years, he can afford me no assistance.

The people and Indians here in this country are of much the same stature with us Dutchmen; some of them have very good features, and their bodies and limbs are well proportioned; they all have black hair and eyes, but their skin is yellow. In summer they go naked, having only their private parts covered with a patch. The children and young folks to 10, 12 and 14 years of age go mother naked. In winter, they hang loosely about them an undressed deer's, or bear's, or panther's skin; or they take some Beaver and otter skins, of wild cat's, raccoon's, martin's, otter's, mink's, squirrel's or several kinds of skins, which are plenty in this country, and sew some of them to the others, until it is a square piece, and that is then a garment for them; or they buy of us Dutchmen two and an half ells of duffels, and that they hang loosely on them, just as it was torn off, without any sewing, and as they go away they look very much at themselves, and think they are very fine. They make themselves stockings and shoes of deer skin, or they take leaves of their corn, and plat them together and use them for shoes. The women, as well as the men, go naked about the head. The women let their hair grow very long, and tie it together a little, and let it hang down their backs. Some of the men wear their hair on one side of the head, and some on both sides, and a long lock of hair hanging down. On the top of their heads they have a streak of hair from the forehead to the neck, about the breadth of three fingers, and this they shorten until it is about two or three fingers long, and it stands right on end like a cock's comb or hog's bristles; on both sides of this cock's comb they cut the hair short off, except the aforesaid locks, and they also leave on the bare places here and there small locks, such as are in sweeping-brushes, and then they are very fine.

They likewise paint their faces red, blue, &c., and then they look like the devil himself. They smear their heads with bear's-grease, which they all carry with them for this purpose in a small basket; they say they do it to make their hair grow better and prevent their having lice. When they travel, they take with them some of their maize, a kettle, a wooden bowl, and a spoon; these they pack up and hang on their backs. Whenever they are hungry, they forthwith make a fire and cook; they can get fire by rubbing pieces of wood against one another, and that very quickly.

They generally live without marriage; but if any of them have wives, the marriage continues no longer than they think proper, and then they separate, and each takes another partner. I have seen those who had parted, and afterwards lived a long time with others, seek their former partners, and again be one pair. And, though they have wives, yet they will not leave off going a whoring; and if they can sleep with another man's wife, they think it a brave thing. The women are exceedingly addicted to whoring; they will lie with a man for the value of one, two, or three schillings, and our Dutchmen run after them very much.

The women, when they have been delivered, go about immediately afterwards, and be it ever so cold it makes no difference, they wash themselves and the young child in the river or the snow. They will not lie down (for they say that if they did they should soon die), but keep going about. They are obliged to cut wood, to travel three or four miles with their child in a wood; they go, they stand, they work, as if they had not lain in, and we cannot see that they suffer any injury by it; and we sometimes try to persuade our wives to lay-in so, and that the way of lying-in in Holland is a mere fiddle-faddle. The men have great authority over their concubines, so that if they do anything which affronts them and raises their passion, they take an axe and knock them in the head, and there is an end of it. The women are obliged to prepare the land, to mow, to plant, and do everything ;-the men do nothing, except hunting, fishing, and going to war against their enemies. They are very cruel towards their enemies in time of war; for they first bite off the nails of the fingers of their captives, and cut off some joints, and sometimes the whole of the fingers; after that, the captives are forced to sing and dance before them stark naked; and finally, they roast their prisoners dead before a slow fire for some days, and then eat them up. The common people eat the arms, buttocks and trunk, but the chiefs eat the head and the heart.

Our Mahakas carry on great war against the Indians of Canada, on the River Saint Lawrence, and take many captives, and sometimes there are French Christians among them. Last year, our Indians got a great booty from the French on the River Saint Lawrence, and took three Frenchmen, one of whom was a Jesuit. They killed one, but the

* This happened on the 4th of August, 1642. The Jesuit Father, whose life