untry lions, bears, wolves,
foxes, and particularly very many snakes, which are large and as long
as eight, ten, and twelve feet. Among others, there is a sort of
snake, which we call rattlesnake, from a certain object which it has
back upon its tail, two or three fingers' breadth long, and has ten or
twelve joints, and with this it makes a noise like the crickets. Its
color is variegated much like our large brindled bulls. These snakes
have very sharp teeth in their mouth, and dare to bite at dogs; they
make way for neither man nor beast, but fall on and bite them, and
their bite is very poisonous, and commonly even deadly too.

As to the soil of this country, that on the mountains is a reddish sand
or rock, but in the low flat lands, and along the rivers, and even in
the jutting sides of the mountains for an hundred or two hundred paces
up, there is often clay. 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
crops, for a farmer here told me that he had raised fine wheat on 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 leagues north of us. There is 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 here with us. In the beginning of
June twelve of us took 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 seemed all the time as if it were raining; and the
trees on the hills near by (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,
especially when 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 color with the rainbow in the sky.
And when we had gone about ten or twelve rods farther downwards from
the fall, along the