There are several woods, plants and earths, which have been fit for the dying of curious colors. They have the puccoon and musquaspen, two roots, with which the Indians use to paint themselves red. And a berry, which grows upon a wild briar, dyes a handsome blue. There is the sumac and the sassafras, which make a deep yellow. Mr. Heriot tells us of several others which he found at Pamtego, and gives the Indian names of them; but that language being not understood by the Virginians, I am not able to distinguish which he means. Particularly he takes notice of wasebur, an herb; chapacour, a root; and tangomockonominge, a bark.
There's the snake root, so much admired in England for a cordial, and for being a great antidote in all pestilential distempers.
There's the rattlesnake root, to which no remedy was ever yet found comparable; for it effectually cures the bite of a rattlesnake, which sometimes has been mortal in two minutes. If this medicine be early applied, it presently removes the infection, and in two or three hours restores the patient to as perfect health as if he had never been hurt.
The Jamestown weed (which resembles the thorny apple of Peru, and I take to be the plant so called) is supposed to be one of the greatest coolers in the world. This being an early plant, was gathered very young for a boiled salad, by some of the soldiers sent thither to quell the rebellion of Bacon; and some of them eat plentifully of it, the effect of which was a very pleasant comedy; for they turned natural fools upon it for several days: one would blow up a feather in the air; another would dart straws at it with much fury; and another stark naked was sitting up in a corner, like a monkey, grinning and making mows at them; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his companions, and snear in their faces, with a countenance more antic than any in a Dutch droll. In this frantic condition they were confined, lest they should in their folly destroy themselves; though it was observed that all their actions were full of innocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly, for they would have wallowed in their own excrements if they had not been prevented. A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after eleven days returned to themselves again, not remembering anything that had passed.
Perhaps this was the same herb that Mark Antony's army met with in his retreat from the Parthian war and siege of Phraata, when such as had eaten thereof employed themselves with much earnestness and industry in grubbing up stones, and removing them from one place to another, as if it had been a business of the greatest consequence. Wine, as the story says, was found a sovereign remedy for it, which is likely enough, the malignity of this herb being cold.
Of spontaneous flowers they have an unknown variety: the finest crown imperial in the world; the cardinal flower, so much extolled for its scarlet color, is almost in every branch; the moccasin flower, and a thousand others not yet known to English herbalists. Almost all the year round the levels and vales are beautified with flowers of one kind or other, which make their woods as fragrant as a garden. From the materials, their wild bees make vast quantities of honey, but their magazines are very often rifled by bears, raccoons, and such like liquorish vermin.
About the year 1701, walking out to take the air, I found, a little without my pasture fence, a flower as big as a tulip, and upon a stalk resembling the stalk of a tulip. The flower was of a flesh color, having a down upon one end, while the other was plain. The form of it resembled the pudenda of a man and woman lovingly joined in one. Not long after I had discovered this rarity, and while it was still in bloom, I drew a grave gentleman, about an hundred yards out of his way, to see this curiosity, not telling him anything more than that it was a rarity, and such perhaps as he had never seen nor heard of. When we arrived at the place, I gathered one of them, and put it into his hand, which he had no sooner cast his eye upon, but he threw it away with indignation, as being ashamed of this waggery of nature. It was impossible to persuade him to touch it again, or so much as to squint towards so immodest a representation. Neither would I presume to mention such an indecency, but that I thought it unpardonable to omit a production so extraordinary.
There is also found the fine tulip-bearing laurel tree, which has the pleasantest smell in the world, and keeps blossoming and seeding several months together. It delights much in gravelly branches of chrystal streams, and perfumes the very woods with its odor. So also do the large tulip tree, which we call a poplar, the locust, which resembles much the jasmine, and the perfuming crab tree, during their season. With one sort or other of these, as well as many other sweet-flowering trees not named, the vales are almost everywhere adorned, and yield a surprising variety to divert the traveler.
They find a world of medicinal plants likewise in that country, and amongst the rest the planters pretend to have a swamp-root, which infallibly cures all fevers and agues. The bark of the sassafras tree and wild cherry tree have been experimented to partake very much of the virtue of the cortex peruviana. The bark of the root, of that which we call the prickly ash, being dried and powdered, has been found to be a specific in old ulcers and long running sores. Infinite is the number of other valuable vegetables of every kind; but natural history not having been my study, I am unwilling to do wrong to my subject by an unskillful description.
§ 19. Several kinds of the creeping vines bearing fruit, the Indians planted in their gardens or fields, because they would have plenty of them always at hand; such as muskmelons, watermelons, pompions, cushaws, macocks and gourds.