aches, strawberries, cushaws,
melons, pompions, macocks, &c. The cushaws and pompions they lay by,
which will keep several months good after they are gathered; the peaches
they save by drying them in the sun; they have likewise several sorts of
the phaseoli.

In the woods, they gather chinkapins, chestnuts, hickories and walnuts.
The kernels of the hickories they beat in a mortar with water, and make
a white liquor like milk, from whence they call our milk hickory.
Hazelnuts they will not meddle with, though they make a shift with
acorns sometimes, and eat all the other fruits mentioned before, but
they never eat any sort of herbs or leaves.

They make food of another fruit called cuttanimmons, the fruit of a kind
of arum, growing in the marshes: they are like boiled peas or capers to
look on, but of an insipid earthy taste. Captain Smith in his History of
Virginia calls them ocaughtanamnis, and Theod. de Bry in his
translation, sacquenummener.

Out of the ground they dig trubs, earth nuts, wild onions, and a
tuberous root they call tuckahoe, which while crude is of a very hot and
virulent quality: but they can manage it so, as in case of necessity, to
make bread of it, just as the East Indians and those of Egypt are said
to do of colocassia, or the West Indians of cassava. It grows like a
flag in the miry marshes, having roots of the magnitude and taste of
Irish potatoes, which are easy to be dug up.

Sec. 16. They accustom themselves to no set meals, but eat night and day,
when they have plenty of provisions, or if they have got any thing that
is a rarity. They are very patient of hunger, when by any accident they
happen to have nothing to eat; which they make more easy to themselves
by girding up their bellies, just as the wild Arabs are said to do in
their long marches; by which means they are less sensible of the
impressions of hunger.

Sec. 17. Among all this variety of food, nature hath not taught them the
use of any other drink than water; which though they have in cool and
pleasant springs every where, yet they will not drink that if they can
get pond water, or such as has been warmed by the sun and weather.
Baron Lahontan tells of a sweet juice of maple, which the Indians to the
northward gave him, mingled with water; but our Indians use no such
drink. For their strong drink they are altogether beholden to us, and
are so greedy of it, that most of them will be drunk as often as they
find an opportunity;