Another sort is called Sapummener, which being boiled or parched, doth eat and taste like vnto Chesnuts. They sometime also make bread of this sort.
The fift sort is called Mangummenauk, and is the acorne of their kinde of Oake, the which being dried after the maner of the first sorts, and afterward watered, they boile them, and their seruants, or sometime the chiefe themselues, either for variety or for want of bread, do eat them with their fish or flesh.
Of Beasts.
Deere, in some places there are great store: neere vnto the Sea coast they are of the ordinary bignesse of ours in England, and some lesse: but further vp into the countrey, where there is better food, they are greater: they differ from ours onely in this, their tailes are longer, and the snags of their hornes looke backwards.
Conies. Those that we haue seene, and all that we can heare of are of a gray colour like vnto Hares: in some places there are such plenty that all the people of some townes make them mantles of the furre or flue of the skinnes of those which they vsually take.
Saquenuckot and Maquowoc, two kinds of small beasts greater then Conies, which are very good meat. We neuer tooke any of them our selues, but sometime eat of such as the inhabitants had taken and brought vnto vs.
Squirels, which are a grey colour, we haue taken and eaten.
Beares, which are of blacke colour. The beares of this countrey are good meat. The inhabitants in time of Winter do vse to take and eat many: so also sometime did we. They are taken commonly in this sort: In some Islands or places where they are, being hunted for assoone as they haue spiall of a man, they presently run away, and then being chased, they clime and get vp the next tree they can: from whence with arrowes they are shot [pg 344] downe starke dead, or with those wounds that they may after easily be killed. We sometime shot them downe with our calieuers.
I haue the name of eight and twenty seuerall sorts of beasts, which I haue heard of to be here and there dispersed in the countrey, especially in the maine; of which there are onely twelue kinds that we haue yet discouered; and of those that be good meat we know only them before mentioned. The inhabitants sometime kill the Lion, and eat him:[98] and we sometime as they came to our hands of their Woolues or Wooluish dogs, which I haue not set downe for good meat, least that some would vnderstand my iudgement therein to be more simple then needeth, although I could alleage the difference in taste of those kinds from ours, which by some of our company haue bene experimented in both.