he landing
of the Pilgrims. Roasting ears of green corn were made the foundation of
a solemn Indian feast and also of a planters' frolic. It is curious to
read Winthrop's careful explanation, that when corn is parched it turns
entirely inside out, and is "white and floury within;" and to think that
there ever was a time when pop-corn was a novelty to white children in
New England.

Wood said that _sukquttahhash_ was "seethed like beanes." Roger Williams
said that "_nassaump_, which the English call Samp, is Indian corne
beaten & boil'd and eaten hot or cold with milke or butter and is a diet
exceeding wholesome for English bodies." _Nocake_, or _nokick_, Wood, in
his "New England Prospects," thus defines: "Indian corn parched in the
hot ashes, the ashes being sifted from it, it is afterward beaten to
powder and put into a long leatherne bag trussed at their back like a
knapsacke, out of which they take thrice three spoonsfulls a day." It
was held to be wonderfully sustaining food in most condensed form. It
was carried in a pouch, on long journeys, and mixed before eating with
snow in winter and water in summer. Jonne-cake, or journey-cake, was
also made from maize. For years the colonists pounded the corn in stone
mortars, as did the Indians; then in wooden mortars with pestles. Then
rude hand-mills were made--"quernes"--with upright shafts fixed
immovably at the upper end, and fastened at the lower end near the
outside edge of a flat, circular stone, which was made to revolve in a
mortar. By turning the shaft with one hand, the corn could be supplied
to the grinding-stone with the other. These hand-mills are sometimes
still found in use as "samp-mills." Wind-mills and water-mills followed
naturally in the train of the hand-mills.

Wheat but little availed for food in early days, being frequently
blighted. Oats were raised in considerable quantity, a pill-corn or
peel-corn or sil-pee variety. Josselyn, writing in 1671, gives a New
England dish, which he says is as good as whitpot, made of oatmeal,
sugar, spice, and a "pottle of milk;" a pottle was two quarts. At a
somewhat later date the New Hampshire settlers had a popular oatmeal
porridge, in which the oatmeal was sifted, left in water, and allowed to
sour, then boiled to a jelly, and was called "sowens." It is still eaten
in Northumberland.

By the strict laws made to govern bakers and the number of bake-shops
that were licensed, and the sharp punishments for baki