They were then ready to eat carrion that was putrid, so that it is little wonder that they suffered much from scurvy.
Yet the rivers and the gulf abounded in fish, and as soon as the waters were unlocked by the melting of the ice in April, the surviving Indians rapidly grew fat and well, and of course the late summer and the autumn brought them nuts (hickory and other kinds of walnut, and hazel nuts), wild cherries, wild plums, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, blackberries, currants,[5] cranberries, and grapes.
[Footnote 5: The wild currants so often mentioned by the early explorers of Canada are often referred to as red, green, and blue.

The blue currants are really the black currant, now so familiar to our kitchen gardens (_Ribes nigrum_).

This, together with the red currant (_Ribes rubrum_), grows throughout North America, Siberia, and eastern Europe.

The unripe fruit may have been the green currants alluded to by Champlain, or these may have been the white variety of our gardens.
The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the stories of these early explorers are _Fragaria vesca_ and _F.
virginiana_.

From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry of Europe.