the chicken; but not to the same extent could this be asserted of the animals, since there were many species in the new country that are only seen in the primæval forests of thinly inhabited regions.[1] The principal animal discovered in aboriginal Virginia by the first adventurers was the deer. In spite of its ruthless destruction in the peninsula between the James and the York by the Indians, that peninsula being especially adapted to the successful pursuit of their method of fire hunting, many were observed by the founders of Jamestown in the country adjacent to that place.[2] On the Eastern Shore deer were less numerous, and for the same reason, but towards the heads of the peninsulas they became more numerous, until in the upland savannahs, where there was a luxuriant growth of reeds and grasses, they were found in vast herds, and so tame as to remain undisturbed by the approach of men.[3] Two varieties were represented, the red and the fallow, the fallow differing but little from the fallow deer of England except in the smaller number of the branches of their antlers. The fallow deer of Virginia sometimes dropped as many as four fawns at a birth, and rarely less than two; Hamor,
- ↑ Spelman’s Relation of Virginia, p. cvi. In the Report of Francis Maguel to the Spanish Council of State in 1610 as to what he had observed in Virginia, he included peacocks among the birds which he had seen there. See Report in Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 395. He probably had the pheasant in mind.
- ↑ The author of the True Declaration of Virginia, p. 13, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III, states that “hard by the fort, two hundred in one herd have been usually observed.” This was written in 1610. “Our people,” said Strachey, “have seene two hundred, one hundred and fifty in a herd.” There were only a few on Jamestown Island. Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 122. The colonists who had visited Powhatan had seen at least four thousand deer skins in his possession. True Declaration of Virginia, p. 13, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 569; Discoveries of Loederer, p. 28.
