III

Endeavor
To examine village sites on both sides of the river

Cornfields, very sweet
Palisades for those displaced by the Susquehannas

layers impeccable

difficult to conceal less than

courage answers edges unworked
postmolds detected failed to yield
thousands but
complexity dense defied attempts

The soil of an huge and unknown greatnesse
Very well peopled and towned though savagelie

where it meanders

refugium for those displaced
palisaded towns implied confirmed
corn beans squash: the trinity

who (as they affirm) when he purposed to make the world

And is it not miraculous
They should like lambes yeeld themselves
Glad of our company
Giveing us houses, land, and liveings

Less labor and so abundantly
One acre to feed for one year an humble man

And strange mortalitie
Five-eighths among the immigrants
Nine-tenths of the country people, loving and kind

Most precise example in Renaissance English
of the myth of the gentle savage

Aquintanack, Patuxent, Assamacomoco, Mattapanient
never so simple
although they signed treaties requiring

barrel-roof, smoke hole, and venerate corn
at Mattapanient perpetuity
failed to yield a convincing house pattern

(uninterested in the afterlife

And sunlight, when it came altogether desire
ten thousand geese on a river of pollen: spring