de and seven miles long. Governor Berkeley named also brant, shell
drake, teal, and blewings. The sound of their wings was said to be "like
a great storm coming over the water." For centuries these ducks have
been killed by the white man, and still they return each autumn to their
old feeding-places.

CHAPTER VI

INDIAN CORN

A great field of tall Indian corn waving its stately and luxuriant green
blades, its graceful spindles, and glossy silk under the hot August sun,
should be not only a beautiful sight to every American, but a suggestive
one; one to set us thinking of all that Indian corn means to us in our
history. It was a native of American soil at the settlement of this
country, and under full and thoroughly intelligent cultivation by the
Indians, who were also native sons of the New World. Its abundance,
adaptability, and nourishing qualities not only saved the colonists'
lives, but altered many of their methods of living, especially their
manner of cooking and their tastes in food.

One of the first things that every settler in a new land has to learn is
that he must find food in that land; that he cannot trust long to any
supplies of food which he has brought with him, or to any fresh supplies
which he has ordered to be sent after him. He must turn at once to
hunting, fishing, planting, to furnish him with food grown and found in
the very place where he is.

This was quickly learned by the colonists in America, except in
Virginia, where they had sad starving-times before all were convinced
that corn was a better crop for settlers than silk or any of the many
hoped-for productions which might be valuable in one sense but which
could not be eaten. Powhatan, the father of the Indian princess
Pocahontas, was one of the first to "send some of his People that they
may teach the English how to sow the Grain of his Country." Captain John
Smith, ever quick to learn of every one and ever practical, got two
Indians, in the year 1608, to show him how to break up and plant forty
acres of corn, which yielded him a good crop. A succeeding governor of
Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale, equally practical, intelligent, and
determined, assigned small farms to each colonist, and encouraged and
enforced the growing of corn. Soon many thousand bushels were raised.
There was a terrible Indian massacre in 1622, for the careless
colonists, in order to be free to give their time to the raising of that
new and exceedingly alluring