hite, is everlasting; nor does there any
wood so well agree with the glew, as it, or is so easie to be wrought:
It is also excellent for beams, and other timber-work in houses, being
both light, and exceedingly strong, and therefore of very good use for
bars, and bolts of doors, as well as for doors themselves, and for the
beams of coaches, a board of an inch and half thick, will carry the body
of a coach with great ease, by reason of a natural spring which it has,
not easily violated. You shall find, that of old they made carts and
other carriages of it; and for piles to superstruct on in boggy grounds;
most of Venice, and Amsterdam is built upon them, with so excessive
charge, as some report, the foundations of their houses cost as much, as
what is erected on them; there being driven in no fewer than 13659 great
masts of this timber, under the new Stadt-house of Amsterdam. For
scaffolding also there is none comparable to it; and I am sure we find
it an extraordinary saver of oak, where it may be had at reasonable
price. I will not complain what an incredible mass of ready money, is
yearly exported into the northern countries for this sole commodity,
which might all be saved were we industrious at home, or could have them
out of Virginia, there being no country in the whole world stor'd with
better; besides, another sort of wood which they call cypress, much
exceeding either fir or pine for this purpose; being as tough and
springy as yew, and bending to admiration; it is also lighter than
either, and everlasting in wet or dry; so as I much wonder, that we
enquire no more after it: In a word, not only here and there an house,
but whole towns, and great cities are, and have been built of fir only;
nor that alone in the north, as Mosco, &c. where the very streets are
pav'd with it, (the bodies of the trees lying prostrate one by one in
manner of a raft) but the renowned city of Constantinople; and nearer
home Tholose in France, was within little more than an hundred years,
most of fir, which is now wholly marble and brick, after 800 houses had
been burnt, as it often chances at Constantinople; but where no accident
even of this devouring nature, will at all move them to re-edifie with
more lasting materials. To conclude with the uses of fir, we have most
of our pot-ashes of this wood, together with torch, or funebral-staves;
nay, and of old, spears of it, if we may credit Virgil's Amazonian
combat,

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