they consider dainties. * * When they intend to go a great distance on a hunting expedition, or to war, * * they provide themselves severally with a small bag of parched corn or meal; * * a quarter of a pound is sufficient for a day's subsistence. When they are hungry they eat a small handful of the meal, after which they take a drink of water, and they are so well fed, that they can travel a day. When they can obtain fish or meat to eat, then their meal serves them as well as fine bread would, because it needs no baking.” Speaking of their feasts, he says: “On extraordinary occasions, when they wish to entertain any person, then they prepare beavers' tails, bass-heads, with parched corn-meal, or very fat meat stewed, with shelled chestnuts, bruised.”—Not a bad dinner, by any means. Thus we see that while they relied on the maize in times of scarcity and fatigue, it made a principal part of their every-day fare, and entered into their great feasts also; but potatoes do not appear at all.
In using the word sapaen, Vanderdonck leads one to believe it either a provincialism of the New Netherlands, or an Indian word. Very possibly it may have been borrowed from the red man, like the quaasiens or squash. There is, however, a word which corresponds to our English sup, to swallow without mastication, which in Saxon is zupan; the Dutch are said to have a word similar to this, and sapaen may prove a provincialism derived from it. A regular Hollander could probably decide the question for us. Samp for cracked corn; hominy for grain more coarsely cracked; and succotash for beans and maize boiled together, are all considered as admitted Indian words. Mush is derived from the German Musse, for pap, and probably has reached us through the Dutch.
Thursday, 23d.—Thanksgiving-day. Lovely weather; beau-
