88                             HISTORY OF SETTLEMENTS AND TRADE
book cealed under feveral coverings. The piftil of theft
. x^m- . flowers, furrounded with fome fmall fcales, and fur.
mounted with a long ftyle, becomes a farinaceous feed,
almoft fpherical, and half funk into the common axis.
Its maturity is known by its colour, and by the fe-
paration of the covering, through which the blade of
corn may be feen.
This fpecies of corn, unknown at that time in Eu.
rope, was the only one known in the New World.
The culture of it was by no means difficult. The fa-
vages contented themfelves with taking off the turf,
making a few holes in the. ground with a ftick, and
throwing into each of them a fingle grain, which pro-
duced two hundred and fifty or three hundred- The
method of preparing it for food was not more com.
plicated. They pounded it in a wooden or ftone mor-
tar, and made it into a pafte, which they baked under
embers. They often ate it toafted merely upon the
coals.
The maize has many advantages. Its leaves are
ufeful in feeding cattle ; a circumftance of great mo-
ment where there are very few meadows. A hungry,
light, fandy foil, agrees beft with this plant. The feed
may be frozen in the fpring two or three times with-
out impairing the haryeft. In fhort, it is of all plants
the one that is leaft injured by the excefs of drought
or moifture.
Thefe caufes, which introduced the cultivation of it
in that part of the world, induced the Englifh to pre-
ferve and even promote it in their fettlements. They
fold it to the fouthern part of Europe, and to the Eaft
Indies, and employed it for their own ufe. They did
not, however, negled to enrich their plantations with
European grains, all of which fucceeded, though not
fo perfedly as in their native foil. With the fuper-
fluity of their harvefts, the produce of their herds, and
the clearing of their forefts, the colonifts formed a
trade with all the wealthieft and moft populous pro-
vinces of the New World.
The mother-country, finding that her northern co-