an oak in 1607 on the ground selected as the site for the Jamestown fort, two barricoes of red liquor gushed from its heart; when tasted it was found to resemble vinegar, although smacking strongly of the wood; and a similar phenomenon was noticed a few days later in the further extension of the clearing.[1] Cypresses were found three fathoms in girth about the roots and rising in a perfectly straight line, and without a branch to the height of sixty or eighty feet.[2] In different parts of Virginia there were beautiful groves of mulberry. So numerous were they in Arrahattock, a country situated on the north side of the Powhatan and to the east of the Falls, that the name of Mulberry Shade was given to one spot in that region.[3] The ash was also an ordinary tree in Virginia, and it was soon found to be unusually well adapted to the manufacture of soap ashes; if burnt very carefully, the ashes of the large specimens formed in hard lumps of the finest quality, while the ashes of the small resolved themselves into a foul black powder.[4] The ash must have been growing in considerable numbers in the immediate vicinity of Jamestown, since a part of the time of the first colonists was spent in converting it into soap ashes for shipment to England, where this commodity commanded a profitable return. It was said of the original cedars of Virginia that they could stand a comparison with those of
- ↑ A Relatyon of the Discovery of Our River, p. liv.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 56.
- ↑ A Relatyon of the Discovery of Our River, p. xlviii. Hamor, in his True Discourse, p. 22, states that there was “greet store of mulberries about the Bermuda Cittie and Hundirds,” while at Kecoughtan, according to Strachey (see Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 60), there “were many prettie copsies or boskes as it weere” of the same trees. The Virginian mulberry was of the white variety, which was especially adapted to the nourishment of the silk-worm. See A True Declaration of Virginia, p. 22, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 56.
