November the 23d. Several kinds of gourds and melons are cultivated here: they have partly been originally cultivated by the Indians, and partly brought over by Europeans. Of the gourds there was a kind which were crooked at the end, and oblong in general, and therefore they were called crooked necks (Crocknacks;) they keep almost all winter. There is yet another species of gourds which have the same quality: others again are cut in pieces or slips, drawn upon thread and dried; they keep all the year long, and are then boiled or stewed. All sorts of gourds are prepared for eating in different manners, as is likewise customary in Sweden. Many farmers have a whole field of gourds. [[348]]
Squashes are a kind of gourds, which the Europeans got from the Indians, and I have already mentioned them before. They are eaten boiled, either with flesh or by themselves. In the first case, they are put on the edge of the dish round the meat; they require little care, for into whatever ground they are sown, they grow in it and succeed well. If the seed is put into the fields in autumn, it brings squashes next spring, though during winter it has suffered from frost, snow and wet.
The Calabashes are likewise gourds, which are planted in quantities by the Swedes and other inhabitants, but they are not fit for eating, and are made use of for making all sorts of vessels; they are more tender than the squashes, for they do not always ripen here, and only when the weather is very warm. In order to make vessels of them, they are first dried well: the seeds, together with the pulpy and spungy matter in which they lie, are afterwards taken out and thrown away. The shells are scraped very clean within, and then great spoons or ladles, funnels, bowls, dishes and the like may be made of them; they are particularly fit for keeping seeds of plants in, which are to be sent over sea, for they keep their power of vegetating much longer, if they [[349]]be put in calabashes, than by any other means. Some people scrape the outside of the calabashes before they are opened, dry them afterwards and then clean them within; this makes them as hard as bones: they are sometimes washed, so that they always keep their white colour.
Most of the farmers in this country, sow Buck-wheat, in the middle of July; it must not be sown later, for in that case the frost ruins it, but if it be sown before July, it flowers all the summer long, but the flowers drop, and no seed is generated. Some people, plough the ground twice where they intend to sow buck-wheat; others plough it only once, about two weeks before they sow it. As soon as it is sown the field is harrowed. It has been found by experience, that in a wet year buck-wheat is most likely to succeed: it stands on the fields till the frost comes on. When the crop is favourable, they get twenty, thirty and even forty bushels from one. The Swedish churchwarden Ragnilson, in whose house we were at this time, had got such a crop: they make buck-wheat cakes and pudding. The cakes are commonly made in the morning, and are baked in a frying pan, or on a stone: are buttered and then eaten with tea or coffee, [[350]]instead of toasted bread with butter, or toast, which the English commonly eat at breakfast. The buck-wheat cakes are very good, and are likewise usual at Philadelphia and in other English colonies, especially in winter. Buck-wheat is an excellent food for fowls; they eat it greedily, and lay more eggs, than they do with other food: hogs are likewise fattened with it. Buck-wheat straw is of no use; it is therefore left upon the field, in the places where it has been thrashed, or it is scattered in the orchards, in order to serve as a manure by putrifying. Neither cattle nor any other animal will eat of it, except in the greatest necessity, when the snow covers the ground and nothing else is to be met with. But though buck-wheat is so common in the English colonies, yet the French had no right notion of it in Canada, and it was never cultivated among them.
Towards night we found some Glow Worms in the wood, their body was linear, consisting of eleven articulations, a little pointed before and behind; the length from head to tail was five and a half geometrical lines; the colour was brown and the articulations joined in the same manner as in the onisci or woodlice. The antennæ or feel horns were short and filiform, or thread-shaped; [[351]]and the feet were fastened to the foremost articulations of the body: when the insect creeps, its hindmost articulations are dragged on the ground, and help its motion. The extremity of the tail contain a matter which shines in the dark, with a green light: the insect could draw it in, so that it was not visible. It had rained considerably all day, yet they crept in great numbers among the bushes, so that the ground seemed as it were sown with stars. I shall in the sequel have occasion to mention another kind of insects or flies which shine in the dark, when flying in the air.
November the 24th. Holly, or Ilex Aquifolium, grows in wet places, scattered in the forest, and belongs to the rare trees; its leaves are green both in summer and in winter. The Swedes dry its leaves, bruise them in a mortar, boil them in small beer, and take them against the pleurisy.
Red is dyed with brasil wood, and likewise with a kind of moss, which grows on the trees here: blue is dyed with Indigo, but to get a black colour, the leaves of the common field sorrel (Rumex Acetosella) are boiled with the stuff to be dyed, which is then dried, and boiled again with log-wood and copperas: the black colour thus produced, [[352]]is said to be very durable. The people spin and weave a great part of their every day’s apparel, and dye them in their houses. Flax is cultivated by many people, and succeeds very well, but the use of hemp is not very common.
Rye, wheat, and buck-wheat are cut with the sickle, but oats are mown with a scythe. The sickles which are here made use of are long and narrow, and their sharp edges have close teeth on the inner side. The field lies fallow during a year, and in that time the cattle may graze on it.
All the inhabitants of this place from the highest to the lowest, have each their orchard, which is greater or less according to their wealth. The trees in it are chiefly peach trees, apple trees and cherry trees: compare with this what I have already said upon this subject before.
A little before noon, we left this place and continued our journey, past the Swedish church in Raccoon, to Peils groves. The country, on the sides of this road, is very sandy in many places and pretty near level. Here and there appear single farms, yet they are very scarce, and large extensive pieces of ground are still covered with forests, which chiefly consist of several species of oak and hiccory. However we could [[353]]go with ease through these woods, as there are few bushes (or under-wood) and stones to be met with. It was not only easy to ride in every part of the wood on horseback, but even in most places there was sufficient room for a small coach or a cart. Sometimes a few lying trees which had been thrown on the ground by a hurricane, or had fallen down through great age, caused some hindrance.