Fruits they have none, except I should reckon a few kind of insipid berries which had neither sweetness nor flavour to recommend them and which none but the boys took the pains to gather. The woods however abound with excellent timber trees fit for any kind of building in size, grain, and apparent durability. One which bears a very conspicuous scarlet flower made up [of?] many threads, and is a large tree as big as an oak in England, has a very heavy hard wood which seems well adapted for the Cogs of Mill wheels &c. or any purpose for which very hard wood is us’d. That which I have before mentiond to grow in the swamps, which has a leaf not unlike Yew and bears small bunches of Berries, is tall streight and thick enough to make Masts for vessels of any size, and seems likewise by the streight direction of the fibres to be tough but is too heavy: this however I have been told is the case with the pitch pine in North America, the timber of which this very much resembles, and that the North Americans know how to lighten by tapping it properly and actualy use for Masts.

Voyaging Accounts