se again there are large streams and
meadows, but the waters are for the most part shallow. Along the
seacoast the land is generally sandy or gravelly, not very high, but
tolerably fertile, so that for the most part it is covered over with
beautiful trees. The country is rolling in many places, with some high
mountains, and very fine flats and maize lands, together with large
meadows, salt and fresh, all making very fine hay land. It is
overgrown with all kinds of trees, standing without order, as in other
wildernesses, except that the maize lands, plains and meadows have few
or no trees, and these with little pains might be made into good arable
land.

The seasons are the same as in the Netherlands, but the summer is warmer
and begins more suddenly. The winter is cold, and further inland, or
towards the most northerly part, colder than in the Netherlands. It is
also subject to much snow, which remains long on the ground, and in
the interior, three, four and five months; but near the seacoast it
is quickly dissolved by the southerly winds. Thunder, lightning, rain,
showers, hail, snow, frost, dew and the like, are the same as in the
Netherlands, except that in the summer sudden gusts of wind are somewhat
more frequent.

The land is adapted to the production of all kinds of winter and summer
fruits, and with less trouble and tilling than in the Netherlands. It
produces different kinds of woods, suitable for building houses and
ships, whether large or small, consisting of oaks of various kinds, as
post-oak, white smooth bark, white rough bark, gray bark, black bark,
and still another kind which they call, from its softness, butter oak,
the poorest of all, and not very valuable; the others, if cultivated as
in the Netherlands, would be equal to any Flemish or Brabant oaks. It
also yields several species of nut wood, in great abundance, such
as oil-nuts, large and small; walnut of different sizes, in great
abundance, and good for fuel, for which it is much used, and chestnut,
the same as in the Netherlands, growing in the woods without order.
There are three varieties of beech--water beech, common Beech, and hedge
beech--also axe-handle wood, two species of canoe wood, ash, birch,
pine, fir, juniper or wild cedar, linden, alder, willow, thorn, elder,
and many other kinds useful for many purposes, but unknown to us by
name, and which we will be glad to submit to the carpenters for further
examination.

The indigenous fru