The mate saw him making off with his plunder and shot him, whereupon the
other Indians paddled off at top speed, some even leaping from their
canoes to swim ashore. A boat put out and recovered the stolen property,
and when a swimming Indian caught the side of it to overturn it the cook
valiantly beat him off with a sword. These with many other adventures
were duly written down by Robert Juet the mate.
To John Hudson the voyage was a journey of enchantment. Nothing he had
ever seen was in the least like the glory of the autumn forests,
mantling the mountains in scarlet, gold, malachite, russet, orange and
purple. He had been in the gardens at Lambeth where Tradescant the
famous gardener ruled, but there was more color in a single vivid maple
standing blood-red in a bit of lowland than in all his Lancaster roses.
And the great river had its flowers as well. A tall plant like an elfin
elm covered with thick-set tiny blossoms yellow as broom, grew wild over
the pastures, and interspersed with this fairy forest were thickets of
deep lavender daisies with golden centers. In lowland glades were tall
spikes of cardinal blossoms, and clusters of deep blue flowers like buds
that never opened. Vines loaded with bunches of scarlet and orange
berries like waxwork, and others bearing fluffy bunches of silky gray
down curly as an old man's beard, climbed the trees that overhung the
stream.
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