[52] 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.
[53] The author’s account of the Indian works in birch-bark and porcupine-quills is much fuller in his Voyages, p. 143.
[54] Wood’s account is far better.—New-Eng. Prospect, chap. vii. [See page 53] of the Rarities for mention of the musk quash.
[55] 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.
[56] 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.”
[57] “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.
[58] “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.
[59] “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.
[60] “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).
[61] 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.