A History of the American People

was the same general climate. Odd, then, that the English, who came to the Americas
comparatively late, got their hands on those parts where Europeans were most likely to flourish.
Successive generations of settlers discovered that almost anything can be grown in America,
generally with huge success. Central North America has the best soil in the world for growing
regular food-crops. Only 40 per cent may be arable but it has the best combination of arable soil,
natural transport, and exploitable minerals. The soil makes a remarkable variety of crops
possible, and this is one reason why there has never been a famine in this area since Europeans
arrived. The effect of the Ice Age glaciers on North America, which once covered New England,
was to scrape some areas to the bare rock but to leave ample valleys with rich deposits. Thus the
Connecticut Valley, soon penetrated by the English, proved the most fertile strip in New
England, and became in time prodigiously rich not just in settlements but in colleges, publishing
houses, and the first high-quality newspapers in the Americas. The colonists brought with them,
in addition to livestock of all kinds, most of the valuable plants they grew. In New England, the
Pilgrim settlers never made the mistake of the Jamestown people, of looking for gold when they
should be growing crops to feed themselves. But they found maize, or Indian Corn,' a godsend. It yielded twice as much food per acre as traditional English crops. It was less dependent on the seasons, could be cultivated without plowing using the crudest tools, and even the stalks could be used as fodder. It was the ideal cheap and easy food for an infant colony and it is no wonder the corn-cob became a symbol of American abundance-as did the turkey, a native of North America which the Puritans found much to their taste. The settlers also discovered chestnuts, walnuts, butternuts, beech, hazel, and hickory nuts in abundance, and also wild plum, cherry, mulberry, and persimmon, though most fruit trees were imported. In addition to maize the colonists had pumpkins, squash, beans, rice, melons, tomatoes, huckleberries, blackberries, strawberries, black raspberries, cranberries, gooseberries, and grapes, all growing wild or easily cultivated. To European arrivals, the wildlife, once they learned to appreciate and hunt it, was staggering in its fecundity. The big game were the deer and the buffalo. But of great importance to settlers were the smaller creatures whose fur and skin could be exported: weasel, sable, badger, skunk, wolverine, mink, otter, sea-otter, beaver, squirrel, and hare. Then there were the fish and seafood. The waters of Northeast America abounded in them, and once the New England colonists built their own ships-as they began to do, with success, almost immediately-there was a never-ending source of supply. John Josselyn, in his New England Rareties, published in 1672, lists over 200 kinds of fish caught in the area. The mineral resources were without parallel, as the settlers gradually discovered. If we can look ahead for a minute, exactly 300 years after John Winthrop's fleet anchored, the United States was producing, with only 6 percent of the world's population and land area, 70 percent of its oil, nearly 50 percent of its copper, 38 percent of its lead, 42 percent each of its zinc and coal, and 46 percent of its iron-in addition to 54 percent of its cotton and 62 percent of its corn. What struck the first New Englanders at the time, however, was the abundance and quality of the timber, to be had for the simple effort of cutting it down. In western Europe in the early 17th century wood for any purpose, including fuel, was increasingly scarce and costly. The ordinary family, which could not affordsea coal,' could never get enough of it. So the colonists fell on
the wood with delight. Francis Higginson, minister to the settlers at Cape Ann, wrote in 1629:
`Here we have plenty of fire to warm us ... All Europe is not able to make so great fires as New
England. A poor servant here, that is to possess but 50 acres of land, may afford to give more
wood for timber and fire as good as the world yields, than many noblemen in England can afford
to do. Here is good living for those that love good fires."' William Wood, the first American