152                             A SHOET SKETCH
an hour fifty, each a foot long. They have a three pronged instrument with which they fish, and draw up frequently two or three perch at once. There is also in the river a great plenty of sturgeon, which we Christians do not make use of, but the Indians eat them greedily. In this river, too, are very beautiful islands, containing ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and seventy morgens * of land. The soil is very good, but the worst of it is, that by the melting of the snow, or heavy rains, the river is very likely to overflow and cover that low land. This river ebbs and flows as far as this, place, although it is thirty-six miles f inland from the sea.
What relates to the climate of this country, and the seasons of the year, is this, that here the summers are pretty hot, so that for the most of the time we are obliged to go in our bare shirts, and the winters are very cold. The summer continues until All Saints' Day ; but then begins the winter, in the same manner as it commonly does in December, and it freezes so hard in one night that the ice will bear a man. Even the river itself, in still weather and no strong current running, is frozen with a hard crust in one night, so that on the second day we can go over it. And this freezing continues commonly three months ; for although we are situated here in 42 degrees of latitude, yet it always freezes so. But sometimes there come warm and pleasant days. The thaw however does not continue, but it freezes again until March. Then, commonly, the river first begins to open, but seldom in February. We have the greatest cold from the north west, as in Holland from the North East. The wind here is very seldom East, but almost always South, South West, North West, and North.
Our shortest winter days have nine hours sun; in the Summer, our longest days are about fifteen hours. We lie so far west of Holland that I judge you are about foui hours before us, so that when it is six o'clock in the morning with us it is ten with you, and when it is noon with us, it is four o'clock in the afternoon with you.
The inhabitants of this country are of two kinds ; 1st, Christians—certainly so called : 2d, Indians. Of the Christians I shall say nothing ; my design is to speak of the Indians only.   These among us are again of two kinds; 1st,
• Amorgeu is about two acres.
f A Dutch mile is about three English miles.