species of game was more numerous in the other parts of the territory of Virginia than in the peninsula between the York and the James, this peninsula having been more systematically ravaged by the Indians. That such was the case was due to the fact that these two broad rivers, running parallel to one another and separated only by a short distance, prevented the game from escaping. In some instances, the turkeys killed by the early colonists are said to have weighed fifty and even seventy pounds, while a weight of forty, it seems, was quite common.[1] The flesh of this bird was pronounced by many to be the most delicately flavored they had eaten in Virginia.[2]
There were three varieties of eagles: the black, the gray, and the bald. The black built its nest in the top of some blasted tree standing near the shore, and commanding a prospect of a wide expanse of water. Here it sat, gazing up and down in the expectation of the rising of fish-hawks, which had darted upon their prey below the surface. The fish-hawk was frequently large enough to carry off a rock fish two feet in length.[3] In addition to the varieties of hawks subsisting on fish, there were several varieties that confined their search for food to the land, such as the hare, the sparrow, and the ringtail. White, brown, and screech owls were common,[4] and the crow too, a bird destined to do
- ↑ Bullock’s Virginia, p. 5; Clayton’s Virginia, p. 30, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. The largest that Clayton saw weighed thirty-eight pounds (p. 30). Evelyn mentions one weighing forty-six.
- ↑ Strachey’s Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 125.
- ↑ Clayton’s Virginia, p. 28, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III; Beverley’s History of Virginia, p. 122.
- ↑ On one occasion it is probable that the cry of the horned owl, so well known for its ghostly sound to all familiar with the plantation life of Virginia, was mistaken by the colonists for the Indian call. Sir Thomas Dale, with a company of men, had gone to the Falls of the Powhatan. There one night, while they were “att praiers, in the cours of guard, a strange noise was heard coming out of the corne towards the trenches
