th sledges upon the ice, with snow
at the bottome, and lay the fish in and cover them with snow, and so
carry them to market. And he hath seen when the said fish have been
frozen in the sledge, so as that he hath taken a fish and broke
a-pieces, so hard it hath been; and yet the same fishes taken out of the
snow, and brought into a hot room, will be alive and leap up and down.
Swallows are often brought up in their nets out of the mudd from under
water, hanging together to some twigg or other, dead in ropes, and
brought to the fire will come to life. Fowl killed in December.
(Alderman Barker said) he did buy, and putting into the box under his
sledge, did forget to take them out to eate till Aprill next, and they
then were found there, and were through the frost as sweet and fresh and
eat as well as at first killed. Young beares are there; their flesh sold
in market as ordinarily as beef here, and is excellent sweet meat. They
tell us that beares there do never hurt any body, but fly away from you,
unless you pursue and set upon them; but wolves do much mischief. Mr.
Harrington told us how they do to get so much honey as they send abroad.
They make hollow a great fir-tree, leaving only a small slitt down
straight in one place, and this they close up again, only leave a little
hole, and there the bees go in and fill the bodys of those trees as full
of wax and honey as they can hold; and the inhabitants at times go and
open the slit, and take what they please without killing the bees, and
so let them live there still and make more. Fir trees are always planted
close together, because of keeping one another from the violence of the
windes; and when a fell is made, they leave here and there a grown tree
to preserve the young ones coming up. The great entertainment and sport
of the Duke of Corland, and the princes thereabouts, is hunting; which
is not with dogs as we, but he appoints such a day, and summons all the
country-people as to a campagnia; and by several companies gives every
one their circuit, and they agree upon a place where the toyle is to be
set; and so making fires every company as they go, they drive all the
wild beasts, whether bears, wolves, foxes, swine, and stags, and roes,
into the toyle; and there the great men have their stands in such and
such places, and shoot at what they have a mind to, and that is their
hunting. They are not very populous there, by reason that people marry
women seldom till they are