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The Beginners of a Nation

Note Note 10, page 19 — BOOK I. RISE OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY.

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The raccoon, the "aroughcun" of the Virginia Indians, being a plantigrade, was esteemed a monkey; the peccaries were called the wild hogs of America, and were thought to have "their navels on the ridge of their backs." Note 10. Somewhere in the region of the Hudson River a beast is described as having a horn in the middle of his forehead, from which it would appear that the unicorn on the royal coat of arms may have been found running at large. It is not easy to account for the "camel mare," reported to have been seen about three hundred miles west from the coast of New Jersey, unless it belonged to the genus Incubus. The bewildering number of new creatures found in America troubled the European scholars of that day, who were ever theological. They were puzzled to get so many four-footed beasts and creeping things into the compass of Noah's ark. Mercator, the Flemish geographer, avoided this difficult embarkation by concluding that America had been excepted from the Deluge.

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