Travels into North America, Volume 1 (of 3)

I Presume to prefix your name to a performance which will in some measure display to the British nation, the circumstances of a country which is so happy as to be under its prot...

September the 8th. We crossed by a moderate wind, a sea with the highest waves we met on the whole passage, attributed by the captain to the division between the great ocean and...

At last we arrived in Philadelphia about ten o’Clock in the morning. We had not been more than six weeks, or (to speak more accurately) not quite forty one days on our voyage fr...

The Delaware is exceeding convenient for trade. It is one of the greatest rivers in the world: is three English miles broad at its mouth, two miles at the town of Wilmington, an...

1. Quercus alba, the white oak in good ground. 2. Quercus rubra, or the black oak. 3. Quercus hispanica, the Spanish oak, a variety of the preceding. 4. Juglans alba, hiccory, a...

September the 21st. The common Privet, or Ligustrum vulgare, Linn. grows among the bushes in thickets and woods. But I cannot determine whether it belongs to the indigenous plan...

Many people have not been able to find out why the North American plants which are carried to Europe and planted there, for the greatest part flower so late, and do not get ripe...

Having read in Mr. Miller’s Botanical Dictionary, that Mr. Peter Collinson had a particular Larch tree from America in his garden, I asked Mr. Bartram whether he was acquainted...

A black Woodpecker with a red head, or the Picus pileatus, Linn. is frequent in the Pensylvanian forests, and stays the winter, as I know from my own experience. It is reckoned...

A soil like this in New Jersey, one might be led to think, could produce nothing because it is so dry and poor. Yet the maize which is planted on it grows extremely well, and we...

October the 12th. In the morning we went to the river Skulkill, partly to gather seeds, partly to collect plants for the herbal, and to make all sorts of observations. The Skulk...

The Turkey Cocks and Hens run about in the woods of this country, and differ in nothing from our tame ones, except in their superior size, and redder, though more palatable fles...

About noon we arrived at New Brunswick, a pretty little town in the province of New Jersey, in a valley on the west side of the river Rareton; on account of its low situation, i...

The streets do not run so straight as those of Philadelphia, and have sometimes considerable bendings: however they are very spacious and well built, and most of them are paved,...

The inhabitants are sometimes greatly troubled with Musquitoes. They either follow the hay which is made near the town, in the low meadows which are quite penetrated with salt w...

Mr. Bartram had same Truffles, or Linnæus’s Lycoperdon Tuber, which he had got out of a sandy soil in New Jersey, where they are abundant. These he shewed to his friend from Car...

Pensylvania abounds in springs, and you commonly meet with a spring of clear water on one or the other, and sometimes on several sides of a mountain. The people near such spring...

November the 15th. In the morning I returned to Philadelphia. Mr. Cock told me to day, and on some other occasions afterwards, an accident which happened to him, and which seeme...

The Persimon (Diospyros Virginiana) was pretty common here: I have already mentioned it before, but I intend now to add some more particulars. Some of its fruits began to ripen...

Strangers who arrive here, commonly are attacked by this sickness the first or second year after their arrival; and it is more violent upon them, than upon the natives, so that...

Several persons likewise assured us that we should have rain before to morrow night. The reason they gave for this conjecture was, that this morning at sun rising, from their wi...

[14] This has been confirmed, since Cape Breton is in the hands of the English, and it is reported that the strata of coals run through the whole isle, and some basset out to da...