Note 264 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN.

Josselyn also speaks of “baskets, bags and mats woven with Sparke.” (Two Voyages, p. 143.) “Spart,” Mr. Trumbull writes, “was a northern English name for the dwarf-rush, and (as ‘spart’ in the glossaries) for osiers, and I guess, Morton’s and Josselyn’s sparke is another form of that name.” Gookin says (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 151): “Some of their baskets are made of rushes; some, of bents; others, of maize-husks; others, of a kind of silk grass; others, of a kind of wild hemp; and some, of barks of trees.”