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Growing with the corn were beans, pumpkins, and squashes, all in flower; and the cultivation of tobacco is also noted. Here the savages formed a permanent settlement and lived within a palisade. Still farther south, in the neighbourhood of Cape Cod, Champlain found maize five and a half feet high, a considerable variety of squashes, tobacco, and edible roots which tasted like artichokes.
For the most part they gave these villages a wide berth, but sometimes in the quiet of the evening they entered one, and were met by the eldest man and conducted to the stranger's lodging, where slim brown maidens came to them with platters of maize cakes and nuts and broiled fish, and the warriors and old men gathered around, marveling at the color of the one and conversing with the other in stately gesture.
"These countless farms seen from this mountain top resemble garden plots, distinguishable from each other by vegetation varying in tints from the dark green of the maize to the brilliant gold of barley, rye, and oats. Over the billowy grain, cloud shadows chase each other as if in play. Grazing herds are on every hillside and in all the valleys." Gertrude's words were music to George's ear.
He was making an excursion to the Sault de Sainte Marie, and took with him three half-breed Canadians and a young Indian woman who was journeying in that direction to see her relations. As the distance was short, and they expected to obtain much fish by the way, they only took with them as provisions a quart of maize for each person.
The country had been stripped of its crops, of all kinds, by the Dervishes; the villages had been razed to the ground; and the last head of maize, and other grain, gleaned by the starving people who had taken refuge in the bush and jungle. Therefore, although by keeping near the river he could quench his thirst at will, he would assuredly have to face starvation.
At the native location during the year 1842, three families of natives assisted by the school-children, had dug with the spade the ground, and had planted and reaped more than one acre of maize, one acre of potatoes, and half an acre of melons, besides preparing ground for the ensuing year.
Amongst these there are five in particular, to whom our countrymen have given the names of Bull Dog, Bidgy Bidgy, Bundell, Bloody Jack, and another whose name I cannot call to recollection, but who had a farm of four acres and upwards, planted with maize, at Hawkesbury, which he held by permission of Governor King; and the other four made themselves extremely useful on board colonial vessels employed in the fishing and sealing trade, for which they are in the regular receipt of wages.
No saccharine life-blood is drawn from the elm; therefore its elegance is considered. I notice that we seldom think much of beauty when it attaches to something we can eat! Who realizes that the common corn, the American maize, is a stately and elegant plant, far more beautiful than many a pampered pet of the greenhouse?
He had nothing to eat but maize bread which was poor enough, and some small wild beans boiled in water; and little to lie on, or to cover one, except the bare ground and leaves. We would not have rejected this fare if the Lord had made it necessary, and we were afterwards in circumstances where we did not have as good as this; but now we could do better.
All the women seem to be out of doors and sunburnt, toil-worn looking creatures they are, though they wear an expression of contentment, or rather resignation. The potato crop, on which these rural populations so largely depend for winter food, is fortunately good and abundant, and little else but potato and maize seem to be grown here.