river, we saw a complete rainbow, like a half
circle, appearing clearly in the water just as if it had been in the
clouds, and this is always so according to the report of all who have
ever been there. In this river is a great plenty of all kinds of
fish--pike, eels, perch, lampreys, suckers, cat fish, sun fish, shad,
bass, etc. In the spring, in May, the perch are so plenty, that one
man with a hook and line will catch in one hour as many as ten or
twelve can eat. My boys have caught in an hour fifty, each a foot
long. They have three hooks on the instrument with which they fish,
and draw up frequently two or three perch at once. There is also in the
river a great plenty of sturgeon, which we Christians do not like, but
the Indians eat them greedily. In this river, too, are very beautiful
islands, containing ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and seventy morgens of
land. The soil is very good, but the worst of it is, that by the
melting of the snow, or heavy rains, the river readily overflows and
covers that low land. This river ebbs and flows at ordinary low water
as far as this place, although it is thirty-six leagues inland from the
sea.

As for the temperature in this country, and the seasons of the year,
the summers are pretty hot, so that for the most of the time we are
obliged to go in just our shirts, and the winters are very cold. The
summer continues long, even until All Saints' Day; but when the winter
does begin, just as it commonly does in December, it freezes so hard in
one night that the ice will bear a man. Even the rivers, in still
weather when there is no strong current running, are frozen over in one
night, so that on the second day people walk over it. And this freezing
continues commonly three months; for although we are situated here in
42 degrees of latitude, it always freezes so. And although there come
warm and pleasant days, the thaw does not continue, but it freezes
again until March. Then, commonly, the rivers first begin to open, and
seldom in February. We have the greatest cold from the northwest, as
in Holland from the northeast. The wind here is very seldom east, but
almost always south, southwest, northwest, and north; so also the rain.

Our shortest winter days have nine hours sun; in the summer, our
longest days are about fifteen hours. We lie so far west of Holland
that I judge you are about four hours in advance of us, so that when it
is six o'clock in the morning with us it is